


Every One That Asketh

by istie



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Babyfic, F/M, Gen, Pregnancy, canon-twisting, complicated: involves Reapers, new ending, post-ME3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:38:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 67,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istie/pseuds/istie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Reapers are defeated, and the galactic community is barely holding together after the presumed death of Commander Shepard and the disappearance of the Normandy. The return of both, with unexpected complications, prompts a whole lot of questions, and very few answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Calibrations

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the following kmeme prompt: 
> 
> "So after the crew of the Normandy crash land on an lien planet at the end of ME3, it takes them awhile to get the Normandy space-worthy again. Then there's the problem of the relays, and they have to help fix those before they can even get much news. By the time they make it back to Earth and the Citadel, it's been months and the crew is all desperate for word on Shepard. 
> 
> Then it's discovered that Shepard is in a coma...And she's somehow pregnant with Garrus' baby. (Why and how is up to A!Anon.) 
> 
> I'd really love a happy ending with a Shakarian family, please! 
> 
> Major bonus if Garrus gets chewed out by his family not for having a human girlfriend, but for getting Shepard pregnant and never formally taking her for a mate. 
> 
> More bonus points for his father and sister (and/or the Primarch?) helping to see to her and the unborn baby's care until Garrus gets there."

He’d calibrated the whole damn ship.

The Whole. Damn. Ship.

Tali’Zorah was _constantly_ on his case about how he _couldn’t_ calibrate the whole damn ship because not everything on a ship _needed_ calibrating, but he didn’t much care. She usually gave up, throwing her hands in the air and calling him a stubborn _bosh’tet_.

Every piece.

He’d always been a bad turian in an awkward, “please Dad, I’m really trying” sort of way. He questioned _everything_ – not because he refused to accept it, but because he refused to accept anything without understanding it first. One of the turian ‘things’ he’d been worst at was their ‘religion’, if you could call it that. He had a very hard time accepting that everything had a spirit of some sort – turians, asari, salarians, sure, that wasn’t hard to process, he was alright with the idea of a _soul_ – but a ship? A battalion? A planet? That was harder to process. He thought he understood the concept of Palaven’s spirit, a sort of universal turian mother, but you would never have caught him praying to the Normandy.

Until now.

That was what he meant by calibrating the whole damn ship. Garrus had spent so much time fixing it, patching up wires, holding up panels so Tali could get into the walls properly, having long discussions with EDI about the parts of the Normandy that she still couldn’t access… that eventually he’d started talking to the ship. Somehow, he’d separated EDI from the Normandy, though _that_ had been an all-day debate with the AI. The ship itself was different from her somehow, in the same way, he supposed, that a corpse was different from a living being.

Except not. The Normandy, without EDI, would still be the Normandy. And it wouldn’t be. He didn’t fully understand it yet, and part of him was certain that he was still hanging on to the differentiation because he wasn’t comfortable _praying to EDI_ – but there it was.

He had fixed every square centimetre of that ship until he could feel it _existing_ anywhere he went. He calibrated it until it was alive again.

He was beyond certain that _that_ was why it was flying again. Somehow, deep in his mind, there was the certainty that even if they had fixed all the systems, restored power to everything, re-coded EDI so very carefully to bring her online again (Tali’Zorah was truly a genius), _and_ scavenged all that eezo to fix the drive core, it wouldn’t have run if he hadn’t calibrated the whole damn ship.

Lifting off that lush, verdant planet that reminded him too much of Aeia, he had never felt more alive.


	2. Not Thinking

Shepard floated.

It was cool, but not cold; warm, but not hot. Dark, but light; quiet, not silent. It felt breezy, a sort of flow that felt like the gentle waves in a lap pool at 0400 hours when no one else was up.

It was good.

So she floated, and she thought, in the sort of way that one thinks abstractly without actually thinking about thinking – the thoughts just _are_ : you’re not really … _thinking_ them.

Of course, she wasn’t thinking about that in particular, either. Thinking while not-thinking.

Oh, it was so good.

She thought she could hear bells, and a sort of ethereal music. The music of the spheres, something told her. Or she thought. Or maybe she was just thinking those, too.

Shepard felt more relaxed than she thought she ever had. This was on par with, if not even above, the moments where she’d been nestled in her covers, looked at her clock, and realized she still had an hour before she had to get up. It even ranked higher than the warmth of a lover beside her … higher than collapsing into bed, exhausted from a mission completed.

If you’d pressed her, she probably would have even gone so far as to say it was better than afterglow. Floating… just floating. The quiet knowledge that there was nothing to do, and that it was okay. She didn’t need to wake up just yet. She wouldn’t wake up alone. She had been victorious. She’d reached the peak, and could just float back down.

She wasn’t dreaming; she wasn’t even thinking, really. She just _was_ , and somehow, she felt that _being_ was the best thing to do right now. She knew that at some point, she’d probably wake up, and have the galaxy thrust upon her shoulders again (her right shoulder was loose… no pain… if she’d thought about it, she would have been borderline astonished), but right now, all she needed to do was float, and she would have been just fine with that if she’d thought about it.

But she didn’t need to. She just did. 

And oh, _oh_ , it was good.

* * *

 

Admiral Anderson wiped his brow with the arm that wasn’t in a sling. It was blazing hot in the ruins of London, and the casts on his arm and leg weren’t doing him any favours in that department, either. Three days since he’d thought it couldn’t get any worse. Three days since he’d blacked out watching Shepard stumble towards that damned beam of light. Three days since what little remained of his home city be pulverized by debris falling from orbit.

Earth was in ruins. Palaven, too. Thessia only slightly less. Tuchanka… well. He could go on. He was at a loss, at this point. The Citadel hung dead in the sky, and the only person who he would have trusted to bring everyone together and rebuild was…

He couldn’t bring himself to think it. He returned to surveying the situation around him. By rights he shouldn’t have been moving. He should have been convalescing– in a medical facility if he was feeling idealistic, in a field hospital if he was lucky, and in a makeshift shelter if he was being realistic about things. But David Anderson was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch, and once he’d been pumped full of medi-gel and had field casts installed on his arm and leg (and after he’d blacked out a couple more times as the salarian medic had set the bones… less than gently), he’d gotten a few hours of sleep and then back up on his feet. He couldn’t move rubble, but he was still an effective leader, and as long as he kept his crutch nearby, he could stay upright.

He told himself he was there for the morale of the survivors. While it was true, ostensibly anyway, he knew that the primary reason he had forced himself into the field again was to avoid thinking. He was certainly not thinking at all. Not one bit. Thinking about nothing—no. Not thinking about anything.

This was not good. None of this was good. And he had decided, in an attempt to keep his sanity, to simply not think about it. Compartmentalization was something that every good soldier learned very early on: pain was life, and the faster you learned to set it aside and move on, the faster you got very good at your job.

And Admiral David Anderson was very, _very_ good at his job. He was not thinking about how much he had cared about the woman who had taken the galaxy upon her shoulders three times (his right shoulder hurt just… no, he wasn’t thinking about it). He was not thinking about how that particular woman had made such an impression on his life that, were he thinking about it, which he certainly wasn’t, he considered her a sort of younger sister. He had absolutely not thought about making her an honorary aunt, if not godmother, to his children. The children which he was definitely not thinking about having with a woman he cared even more about, a woman who he knew was aboard one of the straggler ships that had limped into Earth orbit only yesterday, a woman who was exhausted and possibly wounded (she wouldn’t say, damn her, trying not to worry him) and so damn sexy when she pushed her hair out of her eyes like—

No, no, he wasn’t thinking about that.

In fact, he was not-thinking so hard that it took several successively-louder pings on his barely-functioning omnitool for the person on the other end of the line to get his attention. Finally he slapped at it in alarm, berating himself furiously for not paying attention while he was not-thinking, and just about letting out a sharp grunt of pain as he jostled his cast.

“Anderson here. What have you got for me?”

The connection was shaky. There was a good amount of static blurring the male voice on the other end, but Anderson thought he could see a young man on the other end in his mind’s eye, probably with brown hair, several days’ worth of a beard, an incredibly dirty uniform, and that sheer exhaustion in his eyes that he knew would be mirrored in his own. A young man who desperately wanted nothing more than a shower and a bed, and maybe even a meal, but who was damn well prepared to stay out in the rubble for another twelve hours if that was what needed to be done.

The sort of man who, Anderson thought, would be needed to rebuild this planet.

“Admiral— we found— we think it’s— _huge_ Reaper— debris— lots of it! And— not sure— still really hot— don’t have equip— life si— near Birmi— sending coordi— please hurry!”

The connection died just as he received the coordinates. The admiral felt like his heart had disappeared from his chest, and his stomach had taken up residence somewhere just below his navel. He couldn’t breathe for a moment, and just blinked. It took every ounce of his well-trained willpower not to turn and run; instead, he carefully compartmentalized all the emotional shock running through his brain, and then let the sudden burst of adrenaline rush in, giving him enough energy to give short orders to his squad to keep searching and cleaning, and then head back to the base camp.

He knew it wasn’t Shepard. Someone near crushed by one of the cruiser-class Reapers, in all likelihood. But he knew of precious few living beings that could dance with death quite like she could.

No. Not thinking. He simply walked back, leaning on his crutch. He wasn’t thinking. This was not a time for thinking. Thinking could come after.


	3. Lost in Translation

Garrus had never really heard the quarian language. Tali’s additions to the Normandy crew’s translation programs had neatly added over ten thousand terms that weren’t in the regular translation programs – mostly engineering jargon, but she’d apparently put in a lot of curse words, too, because Garrus had always heard turian expletives filtering into his ear whenever the little purple-clad quarian ran into a particularly messy coding problem over dinner. The girl had a mouth on her, that was certain, but he’d never given it much thought. Until today.

His omnitool’s data core had taken some damage in the crash, and Tali had regretfully informed him that she simply didn’t have the materials to fix it. It had been the least of his problems, since he could still use it, and he could still understand everyone. Now, it was more of a nuisance than anything else –he couldn’t write more than a couple gigabytes of new data to it without having to erase old data.

But this, this was worth it. He figured he’d simply overwritten her extra programming while making space in the undamaged data core, or perhaps it had been on the damaged part. He didn’t care. The sounds Tali was making were exquisite.

“ _Kas’liminet bosh’tets_ , how could they _masrani vellah_ the _alluhkan ge’thana_ in the _kishrani sematasi_ of _nasral amee’na_ …” And she just kept going.

Granted, the situation was likely rather dire, but to Garrus’ exhausted mind, that made this all the more amusing. If he’d had the space on his omnitool, he would have recorded his friend’s outburst and asked her to translate it all later… Or perhaps just translate it himself once he got her to give him the translator code again. She did keep her shotgun in pristine condition.

Garrus suspected that it was battle fatigue that was allowing him to appreciate the humour in his translator malfunctioning. It had been a long haul. Once they had lifted off the planet, EDI had been able to calculate where precisely they had gone: somewhere just outside of the Exodus Cluster, an uncharted world in an uncharted system. EDI had charted it, of course, but Garrus privately doubted any of the Normandy crew would ever return to the planet. He knew he wouldn’t, in any case.

They had been on the planet for four months. It had been tough just to survive: the Normandy had sustained major damage, mostly when the shockwave of whatever that enormous explosion was had caught up with them, and while Joker had managed to land the ship without causing too much _more_ damage, the fact was that the ship had been essentially dead once it was on the ground. EDI had gone offline in mid-sentence when the shockwave had passed through the ship, her mobile platform simply freezing in place, and the systems going haywire. It had taken Tali some incredibly frantic, undoubtedly brilliant work to return control of all systems to manual within the space of about five minutes while Joker had basically just hung on and steered for all he was worth.

The planet itself had been remarkably hospitable. Dr. Chakwas had managed to do some rudimentary testing on the local flora and fauna, and there wasn’t a lot to eat, but they managed. He and Tali had been the worst off, of course, but Dr. Chakwas had gone rooting around in Mordin’s files that he’d left on the ship, and she’d pieced together an enzyme cocktail that would break down levo-chiral proteins and then rebuild them into dextro-chiral proteins. The resulting soup did not taste good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a decent supplement to the various racemic plants she found. They tended to use it as a broth or as a sauce, and of course Tali was used to drinking odd-tasting liquids anyway, so Garrus didn’t complain. He desperately missed a good steak, but he was alive.

Now, with the prospect of their four months’ forced shore leave coming to an end, all of them had entertained the idea of returning to civilization. They’d figured they were simply out of any comm range, on an uncharted world as they were, and that once they lifted off and limped back the way they’d come, they’d be able to raise someone. Their QECs had been shut off when EDI had shut off – a precaution, Tali had surmised, though she was at a loss as to why it had been coded in – and so they’d been stuck. They had remained in the dark, though, even once they’d crawled back into what should have been long-range comm distance, and even once the QECs had been back online, there was nothing. It was a bit puzzling, but entirely understandable: a war had occurred, after all, and perhaps these particular long-range comms were still out of commission.

Nothing, for another month. Rations were starting to run low, but by EDI’s calculations, they were nearing the edge of the Exodus Cluster. Once they were there, it would only be a day or two to the Utopia system, and to whatever was left of Eden Prime – and a mass relay.

They had just cleared the orbit of the dark green Xanadu when Tali had let out her stream of colourful quarian invective. She had been watching the long-range scanner output carefully, and it was another minute or two before the rest of them could see what she had deduced from the cryptographic code on the screen:

The relay was dark.


	4. Fallen Giant

Private First Class Douglas Einarson was tired. He pushed a stray bit of dirty brown hair out of his eyes and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, dark blue eyes staring out over the landscape of what had been his primary school not too long ago. He’d been here and there since starting in the Alliance, inspired by Commander Shepard’s victory at the Battle of the Citadel, but Birmingham, in all its gigantic, industrial glory, had always been home.

Now it was nothing but a pile of rubble. Only the data from his omni-tool told him that he was standing right about where the swingset used to be. He closed his eyes against the prickle of tears, and heaved a sigh. War was hard. He had no regrets about signing up, and was certainly glad to be alive, but it was the little things like this that got you. He’d talked to his best friend about it not long ago, in the last days of the war. It hurt to know that Chris, who he’d known since they’d gone to school together right here, swinging on this very spot, was dead and gone now – taken out in a particularly brutal Reaper ground attack. He’d died after the firefight was over, the Alliance marines just barely victorious, with Doug kneeling beside him. Chris had gone out with a bang, that was for sure – had pulled a Cobra missile launcher out and taken out a Banshee and two Brutes before being taken down by the Banshee’s last biotic blast. He’d bled out, the biotic missile having caused severe internal damage. Doug was a medic, university-trained before entering the military. Chris had been a second lieutenant, having joined the Alliance while Doug was in school.

Doug had returned to the primary school site on a whim, needing a bit of time to grieve. His CO had given him leave to go for a walk – they had been close by, anyway, not more than ten blocks away. The Reapers in the area were gone, in any case: they’d not had an attack in two days, not after a ground-shaking impact that had levelled numerous buildings the day before the last attack. They’d slowly been working their way towards the impact crater, knowing that it was likely a Reaper that had crashed, and that there would be tech to salvage.

He’d gotten permission to visit the site over lunch break, when the rest of his platoon had opted to stay in one spot, grab an MRE, and get a couple of minutes of shuteye. Doug, on the other hand, took a datapad with him, containing some of Chris’ letters he’d sent while Doug had been in school. He’d meant to read one or two aloud, remember a bit, and then bury the datapad. He’d already done so, and had placed a makeshift cross over the spot where he’d buried the pad.

He looked over the desolate landscape once again. Whatever had hit, it was certainly nearby. There was absolutely nothing left of the pseudo-suburban sprawl in the rocky rubble around him. He could see bits of metal poking out, and thought he could see an overturned desk half-buried in a pile of dirt and grass. Everything was twisted and broken, and it was damned hot.

It took him a minute to realize that the horizon seemed higher than it had before. He found this odd: while he hadn’t been back here in years, the horizon should have seemed _lower_ , since he’d gotten _taller_ …

And then he was running, the soles of his feet warming to uncomfortable levels even through the remains of his armour as he clambered over the piles of slag, climbing to the top of what he now realized was the impact crater. He reached the top, and surveyed the new landscape, which was more of a trench than a crater. It stretched out to the east at least a kilometre and a half, at the end of which he could see a massive, black, smoking… _thing_.

He knew it was dead. It had to have fallen from orbit. But his heart still jumped into his throat and started pounding madly, the avatar of his nightmares in front of his eyes. His omnitool beeped, and he looked at it. He raised his eyebrows, ran a quick diagnostic, and waved the scanner over the general direction of the fallen Reaper. He blinked once, once more, and then sprinted back down the hill towards where he’d left his platoon.

* * *

 

First Lieutenant Karissa Skyler watched the skies. Her men were prepping to go into the Reaper, putting on heat suits and memorizing the shift schedule. While the thing had fallen from orbit, it had clearly been able to slow its descent enough – or reduce its mass enough – to not create a crater the size of Britain, and so they could not take too many precautions. Most of the other Reapers had simply froze in space, or exploded, or some variation thereof – this one had fallen intact. There was no telling what could be in there, or whether her men would be safe.

When PFC Einarson had come running back into the camp, she’d taken one look at his omnitool data and sent him over to their comms expert. It was a crapshoot whether they’d be able to get a decent signal even to London, but she knew if anyone could it would be Corporal Richard Lowes. Now, she watched the skies, waiting for the likely-battered blue Alliance Kodiak to fall out of the cloud cover. Onboard would be a man who was almost as legendary as Admiral Grissom or Commander Shepard: Admiral David Anderson.

Unlike Private Einarson, who had enlisted following Shepard’s example, she herself had enlisted in the footsteps of David Anderson. She had followed his career carefully, as her mother had gone to school with him in London once, long ago. They had not been close friends, but the connection was enough to make the young Karissa sit up and take notice. She’d always loved the stars, and loved the ships her father repaired as an Alliance-employed mechanic. Anderson had inspired her to reach beyond the Sol system and dream about places far away, like the Citadel. She’d gotten to visit the Citadel once, on an assignment when she was working in spec-ops, and found it frustratingly ironic that it now hung in the sky over her home planet.

The shuttle dropped out of the sky, and made her jump. She quickly composed herself, and walked forward as the Kodiak lowered slowly to the ground, landing thrusters firing slightly erratically as the boarding ramp slid out and the door slip open. Down the ramp came a dark-skinned man with two casts and a crutch, and a Private Second Class whom she didn’t recognize, who was carrying extra gear. She snapped to attention, firing off a crisp salute as Anderson stepped off the ramp (for all the world acting like he didn’t have two broken limbs) and onto solid ground. He raised his crutch slightly and nodded.

“Lieutenant Skyler. Any news from your mother?” It _would_ be just like him to remember. She swallowed hard.

“My neighbourhood was hit hard, sir. I’ve heard nothing. Dad was off-planet when the Reapers hit, but she…” She shook her head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Lieutenant. Janet was a good woman. I hope this all turns out better than we could ever expect and everyone we’ve lost has just hidden up a tree.”

She couldn’t help it. She cracked a smile. “Thanks, sir. Me too.”

He moved forward, the private following behind at a respectful distance. She fell into step beside him.

“Have you found anything since you contacted me?”

“No, sir. It’s too hot to get too close. Private Einarson had a modded omnitool that managed to pick up the readings. We’ve been preparing our heat gear and setting up an exposure schedule.”

“Good woman. It pays to be careful. How many men have you got?”

“About a dozen, sir. We’re just about ready to go. Did you have any attack plan in mind, sir?” They’d just about reached her men, some of whom were looking up with interest and renewed energy. There was nothing quite like seeing one of humanity’s heroes in the flesh.

Anderson stopped, leaned back on his good foot, and laughed. “Attack plan, Lieutenant? The same as any Reaper. Go in, get what we want, get the hell out, and blow it up if at all possible. That sound good to you?”

Lieutenant Skyler could only give a tired, but genuine, smile. “That sounds perfect, sir.”


	5. Signal

It was taking ages just to figure out how to get in. There didn’t seem to be an entrance anywhere: just long, smooth curves and jointed metal. No one could make any sense of it.

Lieutenant Skyler’s soldiers rotated out in shifts of a couple hours each. It was about a thirty-minute hike to the Reaper from their small shelter. The shelter was even less outfitted than their base camp, but there were makeshift seats, a box of rations, a workbench, and some tools. It was enough to work with.

Lieutenant Skyler herself, as well as Private Einarson, stayed at the shelter for most of that first day. Einarson kept checking his readings and tuning his omnitool, trying to zero in on the life signs he’d picked up. Skyler just tapped her foot, impatient for her next turn at trying to find a way into the Reaper. She checked her own omnitool, looking at the time. It was almost time for the next shift change; Admiral Anderson would be coming back on this one. He went out every few shifts, picking his way along the rubble carefully, wanting to see for himself.

Skyler had expressed concern about him spending too much time near the Reaper – nearly three times as much as any of her men. In response, he’d been very clear with the Lieutenant: if anyone (he’d deliberately included himself and Skyler in his sentence) showed any signs of indoctrination, they were to be removed on the shuttle immediately. If it got too bad – and here he’d indicated himself – he had said not to second-guess … just shoot. He’d left immediately after telling her this, which she thought was good, because she’d barely managed to murmur “yes, sir” as all the blood drained from her face.

Shoot the admiral? Unthinkable…

But it had been almost twenty hours now, and no one had mentioned a headache. Anderson had sent the shuttle away for extra food, water, and cots, to make sure everyone was on top of their game – so as to avoid mistaking fatigue for indoctrination. Everyone seemed alright, Skyler told herself again – _relax. Breathe_. She kept tapping her foot.

The search teams had slowly been making their way around the Reaper, but they could only go so far without having to double back and return. The thing was absolutely enormous – at least four kilometres long, and a good kilometer tall if not more, Skyler thought. At a run, you could probably make it around in an hour, accounting for the disaster area around it, but when you were trying to find an entrance, scanning as far up as your omnitool could reach … it was slow going. And there were always false starts: a crack here, a gouge there. But nothing. It was like the thing was just a giant machine with nothing inside it. But by all accounts, Saren had been able to travel inside Sovereign…  It made no sense.

Footsteps crunching on gravel. One long, one short. Another set just behind, even steps. Skyler looked up. The admiral had returned.  The younger soldier with him set off towards the base camp after saluting both the admiral and his commanding officer.  Skyler nodded to the young man and turned to watch Anderson.

“Have you found anything, Private?” He addressed Einarson, who was bent over his omnitool, clicking slowly.

“No, sir. Corporal Willemer took a look at it a few hours ago while I was catching some shut-eye, and he did something crazy to it – he’s our tech, I’m just a medic who plays with the tech in his spare time – and it’s gotten a bit better, but I’m still getting just… diffuse readings. They’re scattered. I don’t understand it, sir.” He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, then took the ration bar Lieutenant Skyler offered him. “Thanks, ma’am.” He bit into it and stared balefully at the orange screen hovering over his forearm.

“Can you get any readings on the structure of the Reaper?” Anderson asked, stepping over to the private and leaning on his crutch, peering at the screen over his shoulder. “What about that spike there? What’s that?” He leaned in and pointed.

Einarson chewed and swallowed. “I can’t get anything through it at all, sir. It’s like it’s solid. And that spike is just a distortion, sir. It comes around every so often. I haven’t been able to pinpoint its source. I think it might just be static. It’s still awfully hot around here, and I don’t know what that’s doing to the output.”

“Could you isolate it? Just a hunch, Private. I’ve got no more ideas than you.” Skyler smiled slightly. She’d heard about Anderson’s impeccable manner with the rank-and-file of the Alliance, but seeing it in action gave her a bit of lightness in her chest.

“I can try, sir.” Einarson held the ration bar between his teeth and tapped away at the controls. “Um. Uh …Mm.” He pulled the wrapper off the ration, stuffed the rest in his mouth, and gulped it down. “I think I have something, sir. It’s regular, whatever it is. It’s being distorted by… well, the Reaper I guess, I don’t really know. But it’s regular. Almost like it’s flashing.”

Anderson tilted his head forward slightly, thinking hard. “What frequency is that, Private?”

Einarson poked at the omnitool. “Somewhere between 1500 and 1700 megaHertz, sir.”

“It’s not 1688, is it? Is there a way to try that?” Anderson was starting to get an odd look in his eyes, Skyler noticed. Almost a cross between “I knew it,” and “shit.”

The private frowned. “Yeah, sir, I can try isolating for that.” Another tap. The signal jumped out at them, regular and steady, a single spike in pattern.

Anderson sighed. “Well we knew it wasn’t going to be good…”

“Sorry, sir?” Einarson looked up at him quizzically. “I don’t follow you. What’s 1688 megaHertz?”

In response, Anderson reached out and snagged the chain around the marine’s neck, pulling his dogtags out from his shirt. He grabbed one between his fingers and flipped it over, a small square catching the mid-morning light.

“Oh. Yes. …Sir. ”

The admiral flicked his eyebrows in acquiescence and let the private’s dogtags fall. “Can you home in on that, son?”

Einarson was quiet for a moment. “…Yes, sir.” Another moment. “It’s higher up, sir. Two hundred and fifty metres, at least.”

Anderson grunted. “I’ll call the shuttle. Lieutenant Skyler?”

The lieutenant snapped to attention. “Yes, sir?”

“Find some blowtorches.”


	6. Renovations

Tali had disappeared seconds before the mass relay had been visible to the rest of the crew. Garrus found her an hour later in the conference room, tearing out panels and pulling on wires, exposing old connections that had been left unused when the room had been transformed from a tech lab into the small conference room. Liara squeezed past him as he stood, frozen, in the doorway; she was carrying an armful of wires and holodisplay frames, which she set on the table before turning and moving back past Garrus and out the door towards the CIC.

It took him a moment to convince himself to speak: the quarian was furiously working at connecting some of the tech Liara had just deposited on the table, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to interrupt. “Tali,” he started uncertainly, “ah – we’re nearly to Eden Prime. I just thought you should know.”

“Yes,” she replied curtly. “Come hold this up for me.” He sighed almost imperceptibly, shook his head slightly, and stepped around the table to hold up the panel she had indicated. As he suspected, she began talking after he’d been standing there for about two seconds.

“The relay is dark. The relay is dark! Can you believe this, Garrus? It’s dark! It’s dead! What the hell is going on?” She swore quietly at a wire that wouldn’t cooperate, and Garrus knew she was just venting. It was when she started swearing loudly that one needed to worry a bit more.

“I don’t know, Tali: what _is_ going on?” He had long since learned how to get the young quarian engineer to spill the contents of her brain: you had to take the questions she was asking herself, and ask them again. It got her focused on the answer, rather than the frustration of the question.

“How the hell should I know. Shepard did _some_ thing – that was obviously the explosion we outran – but beyond that, I don’t have a clue. Not one clue. If we knew what the state of the galaxy was, I might be able to tell you, but it was damn well hard enough to recode EDI without knowing what was going on. I don’t know what we’re going to do, Garrus, I just don’t.”

Well. That was different.

“You’ve no ideas at all?” He inquired, honestly surprised.

“Of course I have ideas. My current theory is that Shepard somehow shut off or destroyed all the Reaper tech. That might explain EDI going offline, the geth in my suit going offline, and the relay going offline. But you and I saw on the Citadel – Reaper technology is rather… explosive… when deactivated forcefully.”

“And of course you know she wouldn’t have done it any other way.” He grinned, mandibles spread wide.

“Not likely. She was good at talking, Shepard was, but I think she was past _talking_ to the Reapers.” She chuckled. “Look at me, saying _was_. She’s not dead. But I’m very confused, Garrus. None of this seems to make sense.” She shook her head and sat back on her feet for a second as she knelt under the panel he was holding up.

“So what are you trying to do in here? Shepard’s not going to be happy you tore up her walls.”

Tali didn’t even bother looking up at him. “She’s not going to care and you know it. I’m setting up a workstation for myself.”

“Why not use the War Room? Or borrow Liara’s equipment? Or Engineering?”

She shook her head, still fiddling with a pair of wires. “No, no, no. The War Room is all surveillance and communications equipment. Liara’s equipment is the same, but on a different network. And Engineering is the engineering of the Normandy. I need … I need to be able to pull things apart and rebuild them. I need diagnostic equipment, I need rigs set up for coding and hacking, I need…” She trailed off, peering at the wires in her hands.

“I need to be able to _do_ something. I can’t just talk anymore.”

“I understand. Can I help?”

“You’re holding up the wall, you stupid _bosh’tet_.”

His mandibles flared in an amused smile. “I meant other than keeping the ship from falling on your head.”

She thought for a moment, still staring at the connection she’d just made between the two wires. “Actually, if you could give me a copy of the diagnostic programs in your visor…”

Joker’s voice came over the comm. “ETA Eden Prime five minutes. Ground team should head for the shuttle bay.”


	7. Hope is Worse

The colonists who met their shuttle all seemed so, so tired.

“We don’t know what went wrong. There was an explosion—sort of—and then the relay just went dark. We’ve had a couple teams up there, but we’ve really just been trying to survive.”

It was the same refrain with anyone they talked to. Exhaustion, confusion, survival. This was always followed soon after by something along the lines of:

“You’re Shepard’s crew, right? Do you know where she is? Is she with you?”

Garrus had been managing to hold it together so far.

But now, he’d found an abandoned prefab house (there were far too many of them), hacked the door to lock behind him, and then he’d sat down on the cold, dusty bed, and put his head in his hands.

Yes, he was Shepard’s crew. No, he didn’t know where she was. No, she wasn’t with him.

Spirits take it all.

For four months he’d been driving himself forward, to Shepard, always to Shepard. To his girlfriend, his mate, his love. He’d kept himself going with the promise that as soon as they returned to civilization, she’d be there. He’d given her an order.

She wasn’t gone. She couldn’t be gone. Not again.

He couldn’t keep himself from thinking about it.

It was like Omega.

No, it was worse than Omega.

He still had hope this time.

It hurt.

No one here knew what had happened, either. There had been no communication from Earth. It seemed like all long-range comms were down. They had tried to repair what they could, and they’d recently managed to get planet-wide communication working again, but they had had to focus on food, water, shelter, and medical aid.

Which was all well and good, but it left him no closer to Shepard than he was before.

He knew his duty. It was his place to help, to fix, to build. He was a turian, and beyond that, he was part of Shepard’s crew – and beyond that, he was part of this galaxy, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to patch it up after it had fallen apart. What kind of a turian would he be if he didn’t? Spirits, he wasn’t _that_ bad of a turian.

He fell back onto the bed, then turned onto his side and grabbed the thin pillow, holding it tight against his cowl. He wanted Shepard. He’d been keeping himself from falling apart by way of his promise to himself that he’d see her again soon … hold her again soon … touch her … run his talons through her hair … hear the soft voice that she only used with him …

He buried his face in the pillow, which still smelled faintly of a human woman – but not Shepard – and he keened softly.

He was very bad at compartmentalizing when it came to Shepard.

Tali was suggesting the Normandy go to the mass relay as soon as possible. EDI concurred. The colonists on Eden Prime had luckily had a small, but not insignificant, amount of dextro-friendly rations; he and Tali wouldn’t starve for another month or two, but they were already in semi-precarious health. Both the turian and the quarian had lost weight: the rest of the crew had, too, but it was most noticeable in them – especially Tali, whose enviro-suit hung loosely on her frame. Garrus considered it a miracle that she hadn’t come down with anything yet.

Garrus was caught between wanting to simply lie there, close his eyes, fall asleep, and hope to meet Shepard for a drink… and getting up, walking back to the Normandy’s landing site, and helping to organize the tech team that would be going to the relay in the next day or two.

He groaned, forced himself up from the bed, and set the pillow back in place.

There’s no Shepard without Vakarian.

And if Shepard could still be there, Vakarian sure as hell wasn’t going to chance letting her down.

His left mandible flicked out in a tiny smile. If he did let her down, he was sure he’d be buying the first round of drinks.


	8. Olly Olly Oxen Free

The heat was exhausting. It had taken them two hours to pinpoint, as best they could, the approximate location of the spike, and then it had taken—Skyler checked her omnitool—another two to find a setting that would make a dent in the Reaper’s hull. Or … in the Reaper. She was trying not to think about it too much. It was way too hot to think about anything. She’d given up on thinking. She wanted to go to bed. It had been something like seven hours total now, and she was just about done.

She rubbed her temple and looked at the sky. It was getting late, and they were getting nowhere. The Reaper was nothing but machinery. Anderson was sitting across from her in the shuttle, which was still hovering about three hundred and fifty metres above the bottom of the impact trench, his good elbow on his knee, his chin in the palm of his hand. His broken arm rested against his thigh and chest as he leant over, staring out the open hatch of the shuttle at the small team of soldiers currently cutting their way through the Reaper’s systems.

He was quiet, and dark, though Skyler couldn’t quite call it brooding. She had little doubt that he was just as tired and hot as she was – likely more tired, and hotter, thanks to that cast – but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at him. He looked focused. She wasn’t sure on what, exactly, he was focused.

“What do you think we’ll find, Admiral?” The sound of her own voice almost surprised her. It had been so quiet for hours now, with no one having the energy to speak more than was absolutely necessary.

He glanced at her briefly, then returned to staring at the Reaper. “Do you want my best-case scenario, Lieutenant? Or my worst-case scenario?” He exhaled through his nose shortly, almost a laugh. “Or would you prefer something in between?”

Carissa Skyler paused, and blinked once. She had to think about that one. “… The scenario which you consider to be the most likely, sir.”

He actually laughed, though it was a bit more like a cough. He half-smiled, anyway. “The most likely scenario, eh? Hm.” He turned his head away from her briefly, staring at the stern of the shuttle. “That’s a very good question, Lieutenant. I can’t think of very many reasons for this frequency to be broadcast, but I also can’t think of very many reasons as to why we would be picking it up from a Reaper. So, quite frankly, I’m not sure what the most likely scenario would be.”

She considered that, and thought it was quite reasonable. “Sir, I’m not actually certain I understand why we’re following this particular frequency. I’ve heard rumours of a KIA freq, but …” She trailed off, watching him. He had flinched ever-so-slightly as she’d said KIA, and her heart had dropped the tiniest bit.

He kept staring at the bulkhead for what seemed like an eternity. Then he tilted his head and looked up at her. “You heard correctly, Lieutenant. The lab boys rolled the feature out about a year ago. Some of us old biddies tested it out, just to see if they worked – and then the newer recruits got them. It’s just a small radio transmitter. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s not foolproof, either. Sometimes they get damaged, and send out false signals, or nothing at all. But it can be a way to find a body in a debris field, or in a landslide, or… well, you get the picture.”

Skyler felt a little bit cold inside. “But, Admiral, Commander Shepard was neither a new recruit nor an … um … ‘old biddy’.”

He laughed again, that slight exhalation through his nose. “No, she wasn’t. But she _was_ reinstated as an officer of the Alliance military about … oh … six months ago? Eight? Whatever it was.”

Oh.

“Oh.”

Silence for a moment. He broke it. “Why did you assume we were looking for Commander Shepard, Lieutenant?”

Skyler was slightly taken aback. “She—well—um—I guess we really don’t know who we might find, sir. I just thought—I just thought… well, who _else_ would we be likely to find in a Reaper?”

This time he really did laugh, his chest shaking just slightly as he smiled, closed his eyes, and bent his head. “Who else indeed, Lieutenant, who else indeed.”

He opened his eyes and stared at the floor. “Taking that into account, though, if it’s _not_ her, that doesn’t solve the issue of this particular frequency coming from a Reaper. They might be cold-hearted bastards, but I don’t think they’d care enough to find out that we have an experimental technology that broadcasts a particular frequency when a marine is killed in action. What would the point be? So, logically, that tells me—”

“She must be there.”

“Or someone else is.”

“But who— ”

“Who else would it be, I know, I know.”

Silence.

“So she’s dead.”

More silence. He wouldn’t look at her.

“But they do malfunction, you said.”

No reaction for a few seconds. He finally tilted his head up, and looked at her again with those dark, dark eyes.

“And the lifesigns that Private First Class Einarson has been picking up since yesterday?”

She bit her lip. He raised an eyebrow at her in agreement, then looked back at the floor.

“It doesn’t make sense, does it, Lieutenant Skyler.”

She cast her gaze out the hatch to the darkening sky and the sparks flying from her soldiers’ torches.

“No, sir. No, it doesn’t.”

They sat in silence. Minutes passed. Lieutenant Skyler’s head had drooped onto her chest, and she’d let her eyes close for what she could have sworn was only a second when—

“Lieutenant! Admiral!”

Both Anderson and Skyler leapt to their feet, hands flying to their sidearms. Anderon, despite being at least twenty years older than Skyler, and having a broken arm, still beat her. She mentally marvelled at the man’s capabilities for a split second, then whirled to the open hatch.

Corporal Willemer, his uniform dark with sweat and dust, was carefully making his way as quickly as he could across the slightly-unsteady platforms between the Reaper and the shuttle. It was quite dark out, and one of her men had, at some point, set up a couple of portable spotlights, one mounted on the hull of the shuttle, and one on the walkway. As the Corporal came closer, Skyler could see that he was positively beaming, though dripping with sweat.

She stepped out onto the loading ramp of the shuttle. “Status report, Corporal?” She could feel Anderson coming up behind her, and she both noticed and appreciated the fact that he allowed her the courtesy of continuing to command her own men, rather than assuming command, as many a superior officer would do.

Willemer stepped onto the ramp – onto solid ground, as it were – and stood to attention, saluting both the Lieutenant and the Admiral. “Sir, ma’am, we’ve cut through to something. You’re going to want to see this.”

* * *

 

Anderson immediately stepped past them both, off the ramp, and onto the platforms, walking purposefully towards the Reaper’s hull. Behind him, he could hear Skyler’s direct, no-nonsense footsteps follow him, and behind her, Willemer’s slightly heavier footsteps.

As he approached the Reaper’s hull, he could see that the successive shifts of soldiers (glancing at his omnitool, he could see that they had been carving their way into the Reaper for roughly twelve hours now – he’d let Carissa sleep, he could tell the woman hadn’t slept in at least two days and, strong as she was, she needed a break – and they had hollowed out a tunnel of significant length. The soldiers had laid metal planking down as they’d gone, as the Reaper’s insides were nothing but tightly-packed wires, circuitry, piping, and panelling. Nothing very good to walk on, in any case.

He stepped into the tunnel, which was roughly two meters in diameter, though not even. There were clearly elements of the Reaper which had resisted their torches, and so the tunnel was a bit of an obstacle course. He navigated it as smoothly as he could with the use of only one arm, but it was a relatively easy walk.

It was quite dark inside, though the teams had placed light sticks every metre or so along the tunnel. The Reaper just seemed to absorb light. He felt odd, walking inside it: he felt small, and insignificant, but he also felt incredibly empowered and victorious. Maybe, just maybe, they’d finally beaten the damn things.

He could see a brighter spot of light up ahead, and he could hear the faint sounds of a human moving around in a small, enclosed space. It sounded like the other soldier on duty was packing up the torches. His heart jumped slightly. If they were packing up the torches…

He put the thought from his mind and simply traversed the final hundred metres. The soldiers had clearly been using a good dozen or so light sticks to illuminate their work area, and had simply left one behind as they moved forward. The area ahead of him was almost too bright to see from his position in the dark of the tunnel. Skyler and Willemer were still behind him.

He reached the end of the tunnel, his eyes adjusting to the extra light, and he stopped short. The private who was putting the torches away saw him, and moved aside. Skyler stopped just behind him, and Willemer nearly ran into her.

He stared. He felt numb. He couldn’t quite decide whether this qualified as his best-case or his worst-case scenario.

A wiry female body with curves that hid deadly strength was wrapped in wires, her hair tangled in multiple fiber-optic cables attached to her skull, much of her body obscured by the metallic components in which she was encased.

Her eyes were closed. The rest of her face was covered.

He moved forward, until he was just beside her. She was at an odd angle, most of her torso having been carefully cut out, her lower body still hidden inside the Reaper. Her head was at about the height of his chest, and she faced away from him, down into the Reaper.

He looked down at what he could see of her face. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing; there was too much metal around her to tell.

He lifted his hand, let it hover beside her temple for a second as he debated whether or not this was a good idea, and then he touched her. Just barely. Brushed a fingertip against her head, just to see if she was really there. 

Her eyes shot open. She stared at nothing. The lights shone brighter, to the point where he could barely see – like a camera flash, but everywhere at once.

* * *

 

_It hurt it hurt it hurt oh oh oh it hurt oh why oh **why**_

_No no no no no no let me sleep let me wait let me go_

_Light pain sound oh please stop please stop_

_No more no more no more thought no more pain **PLEASE** make it stop_

* * *

 

He pulled his hand away no more than half a second after he’d touched her, feeling as if he’d been shocked. Her eyes snapped shut, and the light sticks immediately returned to their normal brightness.

Anderson turned back to Skyler, Willemer, and the private, who had moved to stand with them when Anderson had stepped forward. All three were blinking, evidently having been just as blinded as he.

“No one touches her. Skyler, stay here with Willemer. Private, you come with me.”

He strode back down the tunnel, his demeanour having entirely shifted from utter exhaustion to business-as-usual. The private hurried to keep up.

He unconsciously rubbed his hand where he’d touched her, where he’d been shocked.

But she’d opened her eyes.

There was hope yet.

Somehow, he thought, that might actually be worse.


	9. Can't See Me

Private Einarson was a medic, not a surgeon. Looking at what they presumed to be Shepard’s body, wrapped tightly in wires and plating, he felt himself cringe away. He had no idea what to do. They couldn’t touch her, they couldn’t cut her out without chancing damage to whatever systems she was hooked up to—they were stumped, in short.

And he was on watch duty.

It had been two days since they’d cut the Commander’s torso out of the Reaper. Amazingly, they didn’t seem to have severed any connections: Einarson was secretly very creeped out by that … it felt almost as if she’d wanted to be found. Or the ship had wanted her to be found. Or something.

No one was being indoctrinated, as far as they could tell. Reports were coming in planet-wide that the final bastions of Reaper soldiers were going even more berserk than usual, and as such were easy targets. There had been no word on the effects of the blinding explosion that had occurred at the tail-end of what people were already calling the Battle of London: it had seemed to pass through everything, and quite a lot of machinery had shorted out. All the operational geth, for instance, had simply frozen in place; they’d been carefully moved into storehouses, since no one understood what had happened – and no one wanted to mess around with the geth. Though he had heard faint rumours of some quarian wanting to take a look at them. Zen? Was that her name? He only remembered because it had reminded him of his sister’s daily meditations while they had roomed together in university …

Everything was _way too quiet_. Even though the Reapers had essentially knocked out all communication to the Sol system just before the initial attack, there had always been such frantic action that no one had really noticed the difference. Now, with almost all communications down except for relatively short-range bursts, you didn’t even have the extranet to keep you company. Just you and your thoughts.

And in his case, the somnolent legend cradled ominously in the machinery of the galaxy’s greatest foe.

It made for a wonderfully relaxing evening.

He sat on a crate, elbows on his knees, staring balefully at the back of her head which hung roughly six inches in front of him. Pretty cramped spot, the end of this tunnel. It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic.

At least she didn’t seem to be in pain, as far as he could tell. And his omnitool was still picking up those faint lifesigns, though they were emitting from everywhere around him according the diagnostic scanner.

On a whim, he held up his arm and flicked his omnitool to life, waving the glowing orange holographic display over Shepard. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the insistent 1688 mHz spike. He swung it around over his head and down by the floor: the same readings.

Huh. It was almost like she was the ship. Or the ship was her. Or the Reaper was her. Or … oh to hell with it.

He let his head drop forward, tired and bored and worried and scared. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted …

His forehead brushed the back of her head.

_The universe exploded behind his eyelids, red and brown and black and so so so painful._

_The death of a race he’d never seen, machines beyond his comprehension, pain and injury and death and blood—_

_Anguish, horror, terror, pain, a warning, a cry: flee, fly, **leave** , leave now, you cannot possibly understand the danger you are in—_

_All is lost, war is death, blood is murder, the blood of millions on your hands, on your dirty, filthy hands, you utter disgrace, you—_

_How long, how long, untouchable time, eons, ages, he felt his heart contracting and his mind burning, he couldn’t understand, how could anyone understand—_

_Tears screams fear pain suffering anguish angst hatred cries orphans endless endless death death death death—_

**_life_ **

_suddenly a great, seething, swaying, eternal blueness_

_deep and bright and pastel and oceanic_

_cool, calm waves of peace, of joy, of hope, of love_

_you are strong in this place, you are mighty, you have a choice_

**_life_ **

_he could breathe, he was alive, he would be okay, not all was lost_

_love will come, hope will come, peace will come, rest now_

_whiteness_

_blindness_

_light_

**_life_ **

He fell off the crate, sprawling over the mess of machinery, completely unconscious, lying in the shadow cast by the woman wrapped in her metallic sarcophagus.

When he woke, several hours later, he felt calm and well-rested. He berated himself severely for having fallen asleep on watch duty, but consoled himself that no one knew Shepard was here, and there were very few people who would dare go near a Reaper – and besides, she was still there, so it was all good. It was all just fine.

When Anderson came to relieve the private at nine hundred hours, he asked the young man how he was doing: Einarson replied that he felt very zen. The medic left calmly, and Anderson took his place on the crate.

“Zen…”


	10. Waking Up

Admiral Daro’Xen vas Moreh was bored, though you’d never get her to admit it. She leaned back on her hip, staring out the window of her ship at the planet below. Earth. It was an unqualified disaster.

She turned on her heel and started to pace. She’d travelled to Earth with the Crucible, then left on a shuttle as it reached the system. Now, she was floating in space, living on rations, bored out of her suit. Well, almost. She hadn’t gone stircrazy yet. But if those _bosh’tets_ didn’t give her something to do in the next twenty-four hours, she was about ready to start flying back to Rannoch herself. She’d already started building a shuttle-size FTL drive in her head.

Her communications console chimed, and she rushed—no, she _walked_ over to it, and hit the button to receive it. “Admiral Daro’Xen vas Moreh of the quarian fleet receiving, go ahead.”

The rough voice of the human admiral filtered through her speakers. “Daro’Xen. Good to know you’re still holding in there. We have an issue on Earth that we’d appreciate your help with, if you’re willing to share your expertise.”

She crossed her arms, no little bit unimpressed that it had taken them this long. “Oh? And what would that be?”

The voice on the other end was calm and steady. “We understand that you’ve been heavily involved in research and development of new technologies in the quarian fleet, Ms. Xen, specifically involving geth technologies. Have you had any previous experience with Reaper technology?”

Xen blinked. “Not as such, no… not beyond what I’ve picked up from the deviant geth factions. Why? The Reapers are dead, are they not? Or are they…” She picked her words carefully. “Are they salvageable?”

“We don’t know,” came the matter-of-fact response. “We’ve got a dead or possibly dormant Reaper sitting in the middle of England and it’s got something in it that we’d really like out. We thought you might have some ideas.”

Xen strapped herself into her pilot’s seat. “Send me the coordinates, Admiral,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

“I’m sending them now. It’ll be good to work with you, Admiral Xen. Hackett out.” The line went dead. Xen put the received coordinates through to her navigation console, and flared the thrusters.

 _Finally_. Something _interesting_.

* * *

 

Tali’Zorah sat in the hold of the Kodiak, staring at the ceiling. Liara was quietly tapping numbers into her omnitool. Garrus was asleep, leaning back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. Cortez was leaning on the side of his chair, eyes half-closed, staring half-asleep at the dormant mass relay hanging in space in front of them.

Tali ran through the numbers again in her head. It made a bizarre sort of sense: according to the data she’d been able to glean from the mass relay’s long-range signals (which had required a refit of the Kodiak’s sensor systems in order to accomplish some seriously long-range radiography, and some serious guesswork, as even though numbers were numbers, Reaper tech was still a fair bit beyond her range of knowledge), exactly 3.47 semi-cycles before the explosion, the mass relays had received a simple stop message. In other words, they’d just been told to stop. Nothing more. Just … stop doing what you were doing. Shut down.

This meant that the problem could be as simple as finding the figurative power button, or the frequency on which they would receive commands and sending a start message … but that could be really, really complicated. Tali had no idea if each single relay could implement their own commands, or if it had to come from an alpha relay, or if it had to come from a Reaper – and if it had to come from a Reaper, well, they were all just fucked, weren’t they.

Unless…

No, she’d had to deactivate that code just to get EDI back online.

But maybe there was a way to retrace it anyway.

She flicked her omnitool into existence and ran through the data, isolating the spike she’d identified as the stop signal. She stared at it. Maybe that number?

“Liara,” she said, “could you give me a hand?”

The asari looked up from her own omnitool. “What can I do for you, Tali?”

“Well, I was just thinking about trying a simple start command. Can’t say it doesn’t work if you haven’t tried it. I think I’ve got the signal message isolated here, but I can’t quite figure out which part of this is the sender frequency. Think you could take a look?” She keyed her omnitool and sent the data across the room.

Liara opened the file and scrolled through the numbers. “Ah. This bit here?” She pointed; Tali nodded. “Hm.” She fell silent for a moment. “It does bear some small resemblance to very late Prothean mathematical transmissions, which would of course make sense as they did start to break the mass relay coding near the end of their cycle.” Silence again. Tali just watched.

“Ah! I think I may have it.” She tapped at the data, highlighting a small portion of the code before sending it back across to the quarian’s omnitool.

Tali looked over the file again, tilting her head. “Really, Liara? You think that’s it? That looks like maybe a sort of area code or network identifier…but if you’re sure…”

Liara nodded. “The way the mass relays communicate is basically by network node identities rather than by mass frequencies. They do send vehicles almost instantaneously: it wouldn’t make sense to use a slower method to send information.”

Tali’s mouth dropped in realization. “So they communicate in a web, just like we use them to travel?” Liara nodded again. “So then if that’s the case I should be able to mimic this particular identifier, trade the stop message for a start message, and trick this particular relay into starting up again!” Her fingers flew over the omnitool.

“Liara,” Tali said, still typing, “can you get me the data that the humans sent to the Charon relay when they activated it?”

Liara sent off a short command to Glyph, back on the Normandy. “I can try,” she replied, “but count yourself lucky if it’s in my cached data banks.”

Tali nodded. “It’d just save me a step,” she started, “since I’m not sure of the precise protocols, especially when this was presumably a Reaper command—”

Liara cut her off, her omnitool flaring as it received new data. “I do have it. I’m not sure why I have it: Glyph’s notes say that we received it just before everything went dark—and I do mean _just_ before: there was only about half a second between the data burst and the shutdown.”

Tali looked up, fingers paused. “That’s odd.”

“Very.”

“Send me the data.”

“It’s already on its way.”

A minute passed. Another. Yet one more.

Tali held her breath, read through her code, and initiated the broadcast.

An excruciatingly loud _thrum_ made both Garrus and Cortez nearly leap out of their seats as the cabin filled with crackling blue light. Suddenly James’ voice came over the comm system, loud and clear.

“Wooooooeee! Time to go home, ladies! _Hasta la vista_ , Exodus Cluster— _Earth here I come!”_


	11. Search

It was odd, watching three of the galaxy’s top military minds at work.

It was considerably stranger watching them … watch.

Lieutenant Skyler was once again on guard duty, standing off to the side as Admirals Anderson, Hackett, and Xen stared at the metallic pseudo-sarcophagus which, at this rate, was going to be Shepard’s tomb. They had been staring, talking, and waiting for almost three hours now, debating the best way to go about getting her out of there, or how to do so at all. They’d circled around the same topics several times, and Carissa was honestly getting a bit sick of it. She thought Private Einarson, standing beside her, also on guard duty, was about to fall asleep on his feet. She couldn’t blame him. While she respected her superior officers, she was surprised more wars weren’t started solely on the basis of everyone taking so bloody long to decide anything.

“Why can’t we just cut her out again?” asked Xen, leaning around to peer at Shepard’s lower back where she disappeared into the machinery.

“Honestly, Admiral, we might be able to,” said Anderson, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger. “But she’s so connected that it’s a miracle we haven’t broken anything. They stopped cutting as soon as they found bits that were actually connected to the rest of the ship.”

“But,” Hackett interjected, “we have no guarantee that this isn’t keeping her alive.”

Xen sighed slightly and put her hand to her mask, shaking her head. “And your technicians are getting the same readings from everywhere.”

Anderson nodded, and Hackett replied. “Yes – they say it’s like she’s the ship.”

“And when you touch her…” Xen started.

“Odd things happen,” Anderson finished.

“Hm.”

She couldn’t take it anymore.

“Permission to speak freely, sirs?”

All three admirals turned to look at her: Xen shifted fully, facing her; Anderson pivoted about a quarter step to look over his shoulder; and Hackett just turned his upper body to look at her.

“Permission granted, Lieutenant,” Hackett said.

Carissa turned sharply and saluted crisply, locking eyes with Admiral Hackett before speaking. “Sirs, is there no way to communicate with Staff Commander Shepard? I mean, if weird things happen when we touch her, fine, don’t touch her; if she can’t be cut out, fine, don’t cut her out. But, sirs, with all due respect, correct me if I’m wrong, has no one just tried _sending her a message?_ ”

Skyler could have sworn she saw Einarson’s lips twitch out of the corner of her eye, and she had no doubt that he was immensely grateful that he was still facing away, looking down the tunnel. The admirals didn’t speak for a moment after she’d finished. Xen tilted her head away, looking down at Shepard; Anderson looked thoughtful but kept looking at her; and Hackett didn’t even break his gaze.

He slowly nodded his head just the tiniest fraction. “That’s an excellent idea, Lieutenant. Do you have any ideas on how we might communicate with a human trapped inside a Reaper?”

She swallowed. She had no idea. Who hailed a Reaper?

Xen spoke before Carissa could answer with “no, haven’t the foggiest, Admiral, sorry”.

“I don’t know if _we_ can, Admiral, but I think I know who could.”

Hackett dropped Skyler’s gaze (the lieutenant just about melted in relief) and turned his head to look at Xen.

“Who might that be, Admiral?” 

“The geth.”

* * *

 

It was getting dark. Shepard couldn’t tell how long she’d been floating, but it felt like a long time. She’d gotten used to simply being without being, in the funny sort of way that you get used to something without realizing you’re doing anything at all.

It was still peaceful; quiet and calm. But it was starting to get dark.

She was starting to feel stretched: she’d felt light tugs on her consciousness a couple times, but hadn’t really paid attention to them … she felt almost as if there were many things going on of which she was not aware, and she simply existed in this silent, comforting plane of lack of thought.

She wondered what was going on. She wondered if she could touch …

Sheer darkness washed over her and she pulled herself back, returning to the silence and what light remained.

She wasn’t really thinking about it. She just was.

She wasn’t really going to leave, anyway. She wouldn’t leave the other one.

Here, she wasn’t alone. So she stayed, and floated, and rested. The light was fading, and something in the back of what was Shepard knew that in the dark there were monsters. 

She shared the light. No one should have to see the monsters.

* * *

 

“Now, Admiral Xen, this is a wonderful idea in principle, but all the geth are inactive.”

“But not dead.”

“We can’t know that.”

“These aren’t dead.”

“They’re not?”

“No. They’re inactive. They’ve shut down.”

“How can you tell?”

“I have spent a lot of time with the geth.”

Anderson was leaning against the wall of the warehouse, the only light that which streamed in from the open loading doors. It was a grey day in England, the sixth – or was it the seventh – day after the Battle of London. Admiral Xen was standing next to a geth, scanning it with her omnitool. They’d only just gotten to the warehouse: Anderson had insisted that everyone involved with Operation Scalpel got a good night’s sleep after he, Xen, and Hackett had had their little council deep within the Reaper, and it was relatively early the next morning. He’d let Skyler and Einarson stay behind, choosing to take Willemer along with them on perfunctory guard duty. He knew Xen carried a weapon, and of course he had his pistol – along with Xen’s technical expertise, they were more than a match for any looter, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Also, a third set of eyes and a third brain never hurt, either.

Xen made some sort of noncommittal but definitely dissatisfied sound.

“Not going well?” he ventured.

“No,” she said, simply. “This particular platform wasn’t running enough programs to have a copy of the one I want readily available. Do you know if there are any prime platforms in this storage facility?”

Anderson thought for a moment. “No, I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet there were. You go that way,” he indicated down the north side of the warehouse; “and I’ll go this way.” He pointed to the south. Xen nodded, and they split up.

He walked along rows of geth, scanning as far as he could see for any telltale red armour. He was getting decently far from the doors, and he was losing light fast. He squinted. It was a bit unsettling, actually: in his experience, geth were usually moving very fast, not all standing inactive …

Ah. There. A lone red antenna spiking up among the masses. He pinged Xen on his omnitool and headed for the platform.

She met him there about thirty seconds later. “Ah,” she said, “perfect. This should have what we need.”

“What is it you’re looking for, exactly?” he inquired, leaning back on one foot and crossing his good arm over his cast.

She didn’t look up from her omnitool; she was behind the geth now, out of sight. But she answered. “A sheepdog program, essentially. In case of catastrophic shutdown, the sheepdog program is the last one out of the building, so to speak. It collects the memory dumps left by other processes, shuts down any processes that aren’t responding or otherwise terminates them, and routes all processes to the central data storage for safe destruction or retrieval, depending on the circumstance.”

Anderson paused, and was about to answer when Xen continued.

“My hope is that I can retrieve a copy of the code for this particular platform’s sheepdog program, as it will have changed since we wrote it – not only have the geth evolved over the centuries, but as of several months ago, their programming now includes Reaper code …” She sounded somewhere between disappointed, disapproving, and awed.

“And so I am hoping that I will be able to transfer this to the Reaper, since it still seems to be running on very low power, and use it to ‘corral’ Shepard, or whatever is running on the mainframe of the ship, into the central core. At that point, we should be able to communicate with it. My current theory is that the processing power is simply spread too thin through that massive machine … I didn’t get any response from the pings I sent when I was there yesterday.”

Anderson wondered if little Tali’Zorah talked this much. “The program won’t … terminate Shepard?”

“I highly doubt it. I will modify the program to make use of its redirecting parameters rather than its emergency shutdown commands. If this goes well, we may even be able to extract Shepard, if the ship is running on her, so to speak – the Reapers have this incredible pseudo-synthesis of organic and synthetic, somewhat like the geth, only not at all – because if my hunch is correct, _she_ should be the central processing unit … none of the other Reapers have exhibited any signs of life, correct?”

He started. That was directed at him. “Ah. No. Not that we’ve noticed. But I wouldn’t rule it out. We haven’t exactly looked very closely.”

“Of course. Well, I haven’t picked anything up either, and they weren’t exactly being quiet when we showed up. Ah. There we are.” She came out from behind the geth, tapping at her omnitool. She promptly walked right past Anderson, headed for the door. “How soon can you have the shuttle here? I’d like to try this as soon as possible.”

He followed in her wake. “I’ll call it now. Minutes, I’d say.” He sent the ping to their shuttle.

“Good. I’m very curious to see if this will work.” Somehow she managed to make her way through the geth without looking – her mask was bent over her omnitool and she was typing furiously. Willemer leapt to his feet as they exited the warehouse, Anderson pausing briefly to remotely close the doors from his omnitool. At least some things still worked.

 


	12. One-Two-Three

It was very dark now, Shepard thought. Dark, and cold. She felt small, and yet so very large.

She wrapped herself around the other. It would be even darker for them, she knew.

She was tired. So tired. Maybe it was time to sleep. 

Night time was for sleeping, wasn’t it? Yes …

But now it was getting lighter. Quickly, too, she thought. She felt more complete, more whole. She kept the other close, though she still felt safe. She’d always felt safe. Nothing could touch her here.

Finally it was white again, bright white, a white that would have been blinding if she could remember what sight was – and the other was close and … and warm. Everything was small. She was not tiny anymore, nor was she so large she couldn’t conceive of herself. She was right again. 

Shepard smiled. That felt better.

* * *

Xen, Anderson, Willemer, and Einarson all ran their omnitools over the walls of the tunnel, walking up and down.

“I’ve got nothing, sir,” called out Willemer from about halfway up. 

“Thank you, Corporal,” Anderson replied. “Einarson? What about you?”

“No, nothing, sir,” replied the private. “Only on the Commander. I’m not getting anything from anywhere else.”

Xen nodded. “My long-range scans are also showing nothing.”

Anderson exhaled. “I’ll double-check with the shuttle teams. I don’t want to start cutting until we know for sure.” He tapped his display. “Anderson to Scalpel shuttles. Anything on your sensors?”

The answer came in raspy and buried in static. It was hard to get transmissions through a Reaper. “No, sir, repeat—negative. Negative readings—ship. Sole spike—your location.”

Anderson walked up the tunnel towards Einarson, keeping a hand to his ear. “Repeat, Scalpel pilots. You’re breaking up. Confirm.”

Once he reached the mouth of the tunnel, the communication was crystal clear. “Admiral Anderson, we have negative readings, I repeat, negative readings for activity on any part of the ship except roughly 100 meters in-ship from your position.”

“That’s the only spike you have?”

“Affirmative, sir. Are we getting Commander Shepard back, sir?”

Anderson couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll see. Status report confirmed. Anderson out.”

He walked back down the tunnel and grabbed a torch himself. 

“Let’s get her out of here.”

* * *

It was a slow and delicate process. Two of them used the torches to carefully cut the Commander out of as much of the shell of Reaper technology as they could, while the other two scanned continuously. It seemed that the adapted geth program had ‘condensed’ Shepard – or what they presumed to be Shepard, as Xen kept reminding them – not only to her body, but also to the machinery immediately surrounding her. This meant that they were constantly checking to see if a particular bit of metal was emitting lifesigns before cutting through it.

Long and slow. And hot.

But they finally got her out. They’d levered her onto a stretcher, all being incredibly careful not to touch her with anything conductive, and then they’d made their way out of the Reaper and onto the shuttle. They flew off in the direction of London, where they would then take her to one of the medical ships still flying above the Earth – in notably better condition than any hospital planetside.

Skyler was almost sad to see Anderson go. Einarson had fallen asleep almost before the shuttle had left. It was strange, having legends drop into your life, and then slip back out again. It made normal life seem … dull. 

Oh well. She was still stationed on guard duty at the dead Reaper. She wouldn’t be seeing different skies for quite some time …

* * *

The woman lying on the stretcher was almost entirely encased in metal. Parts of her were so hidden underneath machinery and wires that it looked like she was literally pieced together – a modern Frankenstein, a cyborg, part woman, part machine. It was frightening.

Her face was nearly covered; electrodes ran through her hair and under her scalp, her hair tangled and frizzy. Her eyes were closed and dark circles ran around them under the bright overhead lighting. Her upper body was completely covered from her cheekbones down to her mid-torso, her arms hidden in a mess of carefully-woven tubing and wiring. Starting just under her ribcage was a particularly dense block of machinery which rose up almost organically over her hips and actually curved up her back, connecting to the pieces which enveloped her torso. Her legs were wrapped tight together by means of braided conduits.

There were tiny glimpses of skin in various places – her right elbow, her left shoulder, a patch of skin just over her right hipbone, underneath her shoulder blades, the side of her left thigh, her right knee, the toes of her left foot. And of course, her head.

Doctor Emma Fallujah could do nothing but stare. As far as she could tell, the machinery encasing Commander Shepard seemed to be a _part_ of Commander Shepard. The minor amount of examination she had done indicated that underneath the smooth metal covering, many of the pieces actually entered into Shepard’s body or were fused with it. There were even parts of Shepard that seemed to have no organic material left at all.

Of course, if that were all … if those were the only problems she faced, she could probably manage to come up with something. Doctor Fallujah had seen it all. Industrial accidents, late-pregnancy eezo exposure, amateur machine grafting … she was the Alliance’s top cybernetics specialist, and this was her stock in trade. She’d have had to call in help, but she could have fashioned the Commander an entirely new body if need be. It probably would have been easier, given that much of the Commander had already been rebuilt using impressively up-to-date methods.

It could have been as easy as reshaping, grafting, slicing away, but no. No, she had to get the hard cases.

It wasn’t enough that the Commander existed within a Reaper shell. No, the biggest difficulty was that there were _two_ of them in there.

The Commander was pregnant.


	13. Coming Back

War is painful. Seeing your home in ashes: devastating. The sight of a bombed city is a cause for despair. To see an annihilated planet from space – hopelessness. But, perhaps paradoxically so, the destruction of a symbol can be the worst of all: when all that you stood for lies in ruin, what more can there be?

Only months earlier, Arcturus Station had been a hub for human activity in the galaxy: the extrasolar headquarters of the Systems Alliance, humanity’s first home-away-from-home, the pinnacle of human galactic governance. The sight upon emerging from the crackling blue rays of the mass relay was not by any means a cheerful one: the main station was gone, debris creating a synthetic asteroid field of pieces of armour plating, gun barrels, hydraulic tubing …  Nearly the entire crew of the Normandy was standing at some sort of window as they went through the relay, and almost in unison did their hearts fall: any small hope of returning to a rebuilt society slowly shrank away as they stared into the disaster.

Joker steered carefully through the field, hoping against hope that their semi-repaired shields would hold out against the tiny assault. As they slowly approached the remains of the station, it became clear that shuttles were in fact flitting through the field, their small lights flickering into the blackness of space.

“We knew it was gone,” came Kaidan’s voice from the back of the cockpit.

“They could have rebuilt _something_ ,” Joker replied. “EDI, hail them.”

EDI’s voice came through the ship speakers. “This is Systems Alliance Space Vessel Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate Normandy Two, hailing any Systems Alliance ships in the area. We have returned from the Exodus Cluster and are in need of supplies. Alliance ships, do you read?”

Silence.

“Nothing, EDI?” Joker was quieter than usual, quieter even than he’d been after taking the Normandy through the relay on their way out of the system.

“I am picking up traffic, but I do not yet hear any response to our hail. I will continue to broadcast. I would recommend caution, Jeff. The ships display as Alliance on my long-range scanners, but the lack of response could perhaps be cause for concern.”

“Yeah.”

Further silence.

Static.

“—Normandy, do you read?—This is the—”

Joker inhaled sharply and tapped at his controls furiously. “Shit! EDI, clear up that signal! Where’s it coming from?”

“Working. Signal is coming from coordinates thirty-four fifty-seven four-hundred-twenty-five sector alpha twelve. Unknown vessel, this is the Normandy, do you read? We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please copy.”

Silence. Static.

Then sound.

“—Normandy, this is Systems Alliance Frigate Strasbourg. We read you loud and clear. We’ve established a temporary base of operations in sector beta four with survivors who’ve limped in in the past couple months. Any medical emergencies?”

“Negative, Strasbourg,” Joker replied. “This is Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau. Who’s in charge these days?”

“We don’t know much about Terra One—we haven’t seen the relay online in months and comms are down,” came the transmission. “But on this side of the relay, Lieutenant, Rear Admiral Shepard’s in charge.”

Silence.

Shock.

“What?” Joker stuttered.

“Repeat, Strasbourg?” EDI interjected.

The officer on the other end paused before replying, as if puzzled. “Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard and the Orizaba came through the relay about ten minutes before everything truly went to hell. She’s set up the Orizaba as a post of operations and we’re sifting through the debris for anything still usable.”

The Normandy crew sat quiet for a moment before Joker spoke. “Ah.  Of course.  Does anyone know … what happened?”

Another moment of silence. “Well, like I said, Lieutenant, the relay only just spun up, so we really don’t know what happened back on Earth. Speaking of, I’m sure the admiral would love to hear how you got the relay working.”

Kaidan chimed in. “Perhaps over a nice MRE? We’re, ah, running a little short on food.”

“Of course. Sending you coordinates for the Orizaba now. I’ll send word ahead that you’re on your way. Strasbourg out.”


	14. Generations

“Hello? Yes, this is he. How may I—I’m sorry? No, go on. Yes. No. What? I’m afraid you’ve lost me. …Ah. No. Yes. Perhaps. I see. Hm. Well. This is… unexpected. Yes, I suppose under the circumstances we may be able to help. What were you looking for? Yes … yes. Mm. That could be difficult. I will see what I can do. Go on. Yes. Ah, no, I think you may be out of luck there. I will send along a list of potential substitutes. I really couldn’t say given the circumstances. I… see. Ah. Yes. Yes, I think I will pay a visit. Or two. Have we heard anything about the relays coming back online any time soon? No. Of course. What did you say the designation and coordinates were again? Yes, thank you, receiving now. Yes. I will check my itinerary and I will call. This code? Very well. Thank you.”

* * *

 

The halls of the Orizaba were dim, most of the power being drawn from any unnecessary systems towards maintaining life support. The air felt slightly stale, though, just a shade past the usual tinge of electricity and the faint scent of the air recyclers. Kaidan coughed slightly as he walked, the arid air tickling his throat. He was the highest-ranking officer on the Normandy, so it had of course been his duty to meet with Rear Admiral Shepard and get the sitrep. If the Admiral were anything like her daughter, he was under no illusions that getting the Normandy up to speed would be a parade of protocol. He was expecting a solid, detailed report, and expected to give one of his own. He’d always been excellent at writing reports. It had given him something constructive to do back in brain camp, and his superiors had liked it so they’d left him mostly alone.

After this meeting, he expected Tali to go over to the Orizaba to work with their scientists. He then expected that within twenty-four hours of her departure, she would return with most of them in tow to take advantage of the likely far-more-advanced technology aboard the Normandy. He was reserving judgment as to whether or not EDI was likely to accompany Tali: before London, he would have said yes; now, it seemed that EDI’s ‘tether’ was smaller than it used to be, and she had to stay quite close to her blue box.

He further expected that he would return to the Normandy today with a sizable, if not huge, amount of MREs. Eden Prime hadn’t been entirely annihilated by the Reapers, and so most of the Orizaba-led troops and survivors had been living off the planet – but after the rations they’d had from the uncharted world (which they’d pre-emptively named 1002315 Williams), even an MRE would be a welcome taste of home.

In terms of the Admiral herself, however, Kaidan did not know what to expect. He thought he’d had Shepard pegged when he came aboard the Normandy for the first time: blunt, to-the-point, sensible, by-the-book when it worked – in short, a top-level Alliance officer who knew how to handle a crew. He’d been entirely thrown when she’d shown serious interest in her people, to the point where he’d misinterpreted her curiosity and team-building skills (and friendship, what a concept) as romantic advances. That hadn’t gone well. He still kicked himself for it. He’d also been blown away at the level of compassion and kindness she could show … but her aim was unerring when you’d run out of second chances. Commander Shepard had been, in Kaidan’s eyes, one hell of a wild card. Throw in her involvement with Cerberus, which was still bloody confusing, and the fact that she’d been _dead_ , and… 

Well, he likely wouldn’t have to wait long to find out which side of the family she’d gotten it from.

* * *

 

“Major Alenko.” The woman standing behind her desk, looking out a window at space, was a couple inches shorter than Commander Shepard. Her dark hair was shot with silver, her uniform was creased perfectly, and her hands were clasped behind her back. “It’s good to meet a friendly face in these… complicated times. I believe you were slated to be assigned to my command before the invasion. I would have welcomed your expertise.” She turned around, hands still behind her, and appraised him. Her eyes were darker than Shepard’s, her face fairly round with a nose that was decidedly shorter and more blunt than Shepard’s. She gazed at him with a sharp eye, and therein he found the most resemblance between Hannah Shepard and his erstwhile commander: they both had the ability to look past whatever façade you might attempt to hide behind, and see right to the core of your motivations, beliefs, emotions. Kaidan had no doubt she was analyzing everything she saw and putting together a more complete report than his personnel file would ever give. He hadn’t known about his potential posting. He wondered what it would have been like to work under two generations of Shepards.

“It would have been an honour to serve under you, ma’am.” She nodded, accepting his compliment, and he continued. “I trust you received my report?”

“Yes, Major,” she replied, “and that made me truly regret not having had you aboard. I could have used that attention to detail. Now, I’d like to hear more about this quarian machinist; specifically, how precisely she managed to turn the relay back on …”


	15. See and Understand

He didn’t know what to do.  No one knew anything.  Hannah Shepard hadn’t even known that her daughter had remained on Earth.  Tali wouldn’t be able to get the relay running until at least the next day shift – they’d tried sending the same command, though Tali had told the Orizaba scientists that she was ninety-nine percent sure it wouldn’t work—and sure enough it hadn’t.  So until she had the chance to gather more information to try to reactivate the connection to the Charon relay, they were stuck… _again_.

Stuck with nothing, no word, no knowledge, nothing, nothing at all.  It was driving him mad.

He pulled himself off his cot in the battery, where he’d taken to sleeping after the crash.  It was too much to sleep in her quarters when she wasn’t there.  He stalked across the too-small room, and back, and forth, and back, and forth.  He couldn’t take it. 

He stopped at his console and banged on it roughly.  By chance, he brought up the command line input for calibrating the main guns.  These were essentially offline, having been greatly damaged in the crash.  But, he sighed, he had nothing else to do.  He started tapping at the screen, alternately glaring and gazing at the numbers.  He could almost hear the door swish open, hear the scuff of her shoes behind him…

He swiveled, speaking instinctively.  “Shepard.  Need me for something?”

Spirits.  She wasn’t there.  Of course she wasn’t there.  He was speaking to empty space. 

Maybe he should go talk to Doctor Chakwas…

* * *

 

Garrus lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t managed to convince himself to speak with the good doctor – it could just be stress, after all. He was tired; he hadn’t been sleeping well. He wasn’t hallucinating – he was just tired… just tired.

Damn it. He couldn’t sleep. The blue lines of the ceiling glowed faintly in the darkness, his console emitting a faint orange radiance that usually calmed him… now it just reminded him of the many, many things he could be doing instead of sleeping, the many things with which he could be occupying his mind…

Was this what she thought about all the time? When she couldn’t sleep, when he couldn’t understand why she wasn’t dead to the world after one more mission filled with bullets and running and never quite enough time to get it done – was this what ran through her head? The million and one things she still needed to do? Oh Spirits.

A memory flashed through his mind, entirely unbidden, entirely unwanted. A night on Omega, only days before Lantar had betrayed them all… they had been planning a strike against a Blue Suns shipment, a major illegal weapons sell which would have cut off weapons to at least seven particularly problematic clusters in the Terminus Systems. He had remained awake until roughly three hundred hours Omega time, thinking about the careful timeline they would have to keep, worrying about the variables – where Blue Suns operatives were going to be when, which crates might hold the most valuable cargo – even thinking ahead to possible defensive positions in each of the strike locations, thinking about the best places to put himself in order to both lead and snipe effectively… and what if it all went wrong?

Perhaps he now understood a little bit of what Shepard must have gone through every night. Still, though, he’d never had the entirety of the universe resting on his shoulders. His squad had been difficult enough… and she never flinched.

Until the nights when she’d broken down in his arms, crying tears of frustration  and anger, screaming her anguish and sorrow into his chest.

He closed his eyes against the memories and forced his mind to clear, breathing slowly… he was tired…

His dreams were flashes of red and black, gunshots in the dark, and a hand he couldn’t quite reach.


	16. Can Someone Please Tell Me

“I’m sorry, Doctor—what did you say your name was again? It didn’t come through well…”

The diminutive woman shook her head, her chin-length black hair shifting around her ears. “Doctor Emma Fallujah.”

“Ah. Yes. Doctor… Fallujah.” The fricative syllables sounded shaky, almost slippery – entirely unfamiliar. The j-glide nearly didn’t exist, and was rougher, almost a hiss. A foreign word on a foreign tongue, but he was trying so hard, and it made the middle-aged doctor smile slightly – though it only reached her eyes. “I’m sorry, Doctor Fallujah, but I just don’t understand. You mean to tell me that there is a human woman inside that…” He waved at the mess of Reaper wiring, tubes, and metal, to which had been added copious amounts of Alliance-standard-medical-issue monitoring machines. “And furthermore… you’re telling me that not only is that woman Commander Shepard, but that she’s pregnant…”

“Yes.” The doctor nodded. This was a difficult enough conversation to have with a pregnant woman, or her partner, when everything was normal. She had always been glad that her patients were usually unconscious and that she could more often than not pass the good or bad news off to a nurse. Now, though, she just waited. The difficulty of this conversation would have been compounded solely by the fact that this was Commander Shepard they were discussing… but this… well, this just took the cake.

“And… to make things even better…” The man standing in front of her cast his eyes to the floor and shook his head, then raised his eyes to the ceiling and ran his hands over his head, then dropped his arms to his sides and looked her straight in the eyes. She couldn’t help it; a shiver ran down her spine – he had hawk-like eyes. 

“To make things even better,” he repeated, a hint of humour in his tone, “you’re telling me that the child is my son’s.”

Emma Fallujah quirked a tiny smile and raised her eyebrow, nodding.

Aelianus Vakarian shook his head again, breathed out in a soft puff which fluttered his mandibles, then turned to the window out into the observation room.

Emma looked at the ceiling and let herself smile at the turian’s bewilderment, which, despite how valiantly he was trying to hide it, came through clear as day.

Aelianus dropped his head into his hands. “Doctor Fallujah, I’m simply … I don’t understand.” He lifted his head and turned around, bright green eyes glittering in his iron-gray face. “I will readily accept that Commander Shepard is quite a marvel, but – surely – she cannot be carrying my son’s child. It’s impossible. It’s quite simply impossible. Please, I beg of you, explain to me how this has happened.”

Doctor Fallujah inhaled slowly, then exhaled gently, her cheeks puffing out. “Well, Senator Vakarian, the simplest thing for me to tell you is that we don’t know. We realized early on in our scans of Commander Shepard that she was pregnant; with the rest of the strange readings, it took a week before we extracted the data that gave us the first clue that the child was not human. It took a week more of concentrated scanning and careful tissue sampling to determine that the child was turian; after that, it took relatively little time to determine that the child’s DNA matched that of your son, Legate Vakarian. Beyond that, we actually don’t know: the metal encasing the Commander makes any scans and samples difficult. It’s just as much of a mystery to us, Senator, as it is to you.”

The turian senator huffed slightly. “Far be it from me to sound ungrateful at the news that I have a grandchild, Doctor, but why was I informed? What good can I do?”

The human doctor tilted her head in acquiescence. “A fair question, Senator. You must first understand that very few people currently know that Commander Shepard is alive at all: the top brass in the Alliance, myself, my assistant, select security forces, and you. Ordinarily, in such a case we would have contacted the father – your son.”

Aelianus nodded. “Of course.”

Emma continued. “However, being as your son’s last known location was the Normandy, and the Normandy was last seen leaving the system just before the explosion that ended the Battle of London … we don’t have any way of contacting him.”

She turned to look at Shepard, crossing her arms over her chest. “We counted ourselves very lucky that you were as nearby as you were as a representative of … well, of the family, I suppose.” She rocked forward on the balls of her feet, then back onto her heels. “Beyond that, Senator, we simply don’t have the resources necessary for prenatal care of a turian child – or part-turian child, or whatever this little one is. Given your current status this side of the Sol relay, you were – apart from being the child’s closest relative – a good bet, shall we say.”

Aelianus nodded again, then began pacing. “You make good sense, Doctor. I…” He stopped, turned, and looked at the machinery surrounding the commander. He inhaled slowly. “I will do whatever I can do facilitate her wellbeing. I warn you now it may not be much.”

“I understand completely. We are only a month out of the war.”

This brought Aelianus up short, turning his head sharply to the doctor. “Has it already been a month?”

“Yes,” Doctor Fallujah said, nodding. “As far as we can tell, the commander was found five days after the explosion, it took them a further three to get her out of the dead Reaper, and from there it took us seventeen days to determine as much as we did about the child she is carrying, at which point we contacted you, and you came along two days later. It has been roughly a month.”

The elder turian shook his head. “So much of this is so difficult to process.”

“I understand, Senator. But I do have some questions for you.”

“Of course. Go ahead. I will answer as best I can.”

“Why don’t we sit in my office? The … change of scenery … might be useful.” She indicated a door in the back of the room.

“Yes, I think that would be a good idea.” He made his way across the room, reaching out his hand as he walked by Shepard, his fingers nearly touching her—

“ _Stop!_ ” the doctor cried, rushing forward and seizing his arm before he could make contact.

Aelianus rocked backward, startled. “What is it?”

Emma let go of his arm and held her hands up apologetically. “While the commander was encased in the Reaper, Admiral Anderson touched her – and experienced some sort of vision. As we don’t know what caused it, we are under strict orders not to touch her with any conductive surface until more can be determined.” She shrugged. “I’d rather not have you incapacitated by forces unknown, Senator.”

The turian looked down at her, his mandibles alternately spreading and closing tight against his face. At last he nodded, then turned and entered the doctor’s small office. The petite woman entered behind him, closed the door, and took her seat behind her desk as he sat in the chair across from her.

“Now, Senator,” she began, “I just have some informational questions. Our databases are, as you can probably imagine, not exactly well-informed about turian neonatal care …”


	17. Here and Now

“Admiral Shepard?”  The lithe, though somewhat gaunt, quarian machinist looked up over her shoulder as she heard the door to her makeshift workstation in the Normandy hiss open, revealing the powerful-looking woman who _almost_ had Commander Shepard’s eyes.  “I didn’t expect you to leave the Orizaba any time soon.”

The admiral picked her way through the wiring scattered along the floor carefully.  “Ah.  Well, you see, Miss vas Normandy—”

“Please, Tali or Tali’Zorah is fine.”  Tali waved her hand.  “Careful, that red one sparks sometimes.” 

“Tali, then,” the admiral continued, stepping cautiously over said red wire, “I can’t stay cooped up at my desk for too long.  Usually in a battle situation or on day-to-day trips I can make my rounds of the ship, talk to my crew – but everyone’s exhausted.  I gave them all a day off to get some extra sleep.  And I—well, I came over here.  I wanted to see my daughter’s ship, first of all, and I’d heard that you might need a hand with getting the relay back online.  I haven’t seen the guts of a ship in far too long.”  The older woman knelt beside the quarian.  “I miss the wires.”

Tali rocked back on her heels.  “Are you an engineer, Admiral Shepard?  I didn’t know.”

The admiral nodded.  “Yes, I am.  And a brilliant tactician, or so they tell me.  But before I rose through the ranks, and when I’m on the ground, tech is my specialty.  I passed some of that along to my girl, but she picked up her father’s stealth skills, which I was never good at.  I much preferred to send my drone around the corner rather than sneak around it myself.”

The quarian laughed.  “I hear you.”

“So,” the human woman said, “what exactly are you working on?  This looks like an amplifier circuit to me, but I don’t recognize this bit here.”  She pointed.

“Ah,” Tali replied, “that’s a little trick I learned in the Fleet.  Doubles your range, halves your power usage.”

“Really?  That’s incredible.  And all you have to do is double-route it through the—”  The older woman traced along the wiring, carefully not-touching the open circuitry.  “Ahh, I see now!  That’s clever.”

“Well, when you have less power than you do wires, you make do.”  The quarian shrugged.

Hannah nodded.  “Necessity is the mother of invention.  But you didn’t answer my question.”

Tali put her hand to her mask.  “Oh, yes.  Of course.  Well, I’ve been puzzling over the coding of the commands I’ll need to send to the mass relay to reactivate it; the ones I used last time didn’t work, unsurprisingly.”

“Understandable.  What did you use last time, exactly?  Your report was noticeably written in layman’s terms.”  Hannah rocked back on her heels, looking at the little quarian.

Tali laughed.  “If I had known you were an engineer, Admiral, I would have filled it with as many technical terms as I could find.”

“Please, just Hannah is fine.”

“Very well.”  Tali nodded.  “What I essentially did was broadcast a modified version of the simple code burst that the Alliance used to activate the Charon relay.  I modified it to trick that particular relay into thinking that the relay leading to it in the network had sent the message, since according to Liara that’s how mass relays communicate.  I don’t know.  I work with AI and ships, not mass relays.”

“Still, that’s ingenious.  How did you get the data that the Alliance had sent?  Weren’t you in uncharted space?”  The human admiral cleared a small space and sat cross-legged on the floor.

The quarian admiral mimicked her colleague’s posture.  “Yes, we had been, but Liara found it in her data banks aboard the Normandy.  It was rather odd, actually: she said that it had been received in a data burst very shortly before the explosion that took everything out.” 

Hannah scratched the back of her neck, thinking.  “That _is_ odd.  What are you building into my daughter’s ship?”

Tali motioned to the wall.  “This?  I’m essentially … well, I’m disguising the Normandy as a mass relay.  Sort of.  I’m wiring broadcast nodes into the inner armour plating, which, if I calibrate our enhanced shielding _just_ right, will act as a wide-scale broadcast system that will automatically broadcast commands to the mass relays we pass by as if we were an alpha relay.  It’s … very experimental.”

The human woman blinked.  “Alright, I understand the basic concept, but … why?”

The quarian shrugged.  “Convenience, mostly.  I don’t want to have to keep going and poking at each mass relay we find.  This, along with the advanced surveillance, diagnostic, and coding equipment I’ve set up in here, will allow me to communicate at greater distances with the mass relays.  Also, well, it’s … pretty cool.” 

“I’ll say.”

* * *

 

Shepard felt different.  She was still floating, but she floated in a much smaller space, now.

And the other one was slowly becoming more solid, less of an abstract presence.

She liked the other one, she thought.  It was calm and it didn’t want anything.  It just wanted to rest, just like her.  Resting was nice.  If she’d been conscious enough to think, she would have thought that she’d earned a good, long rest.

* * *

 

Aelianus sat next to the mess of wiring and tubes that encased his … well, for lack of a better term, his daughter-in-law.  He’d spent the evening reading up on human relationship rituals and mating customs, and now, as he sat here in the darkened hospital room, unable to sleep in the quarters the Systems Alliance hospital ship had been able to spare him, he couldn’t help but _keep_ thinking of the things that had kept him awake hours before.

Why hadn’t Garrus said anything?  Was _this_ the reason he’d gone to Omega?  He still remembered that omnitool call from his son, who had been exhausted and barely coherent, but who had resolutely apologized for the difficulties in their relationship … to which Aelianus had replied, recognizing the signs of battle fatigue and a soldier’s conviction that they weren’t going to make it through the night, that Garrus could handle any of that, and that he would welcome him home whenever he could spare the time.

Garrus had eventually come home, but not before a significant amount of credits had been transferred to his accounts with a note saying that they were for his mother’s treatment, which had mysteriously been transferred to the experimental salarian medical facility only days before.  Garrus had shown up shortly after the reports started hitting the news of the destroyed mass relay and the three hundred thousand dead batarians; he’d shown up on his father’s doorstep, the right side of his face mangled, an advanced model of rifle with mods he was certain couldn’t have been bought on the white market, and the most broken look on his face that Aelianus had ever seen.

They’d eaten supper and Garrus had slept for thirty-six hours on the living room couch.  Solana had arrived soon thereafter and had shaken him awake in order to get him to eat again.

He’d then began to talk, over lunch, and the look in his eyes at real Palavenian food was almost painful to watch.  Aelianus had served his time in the military, and he’d known real hunger, but this was the look of “I never thought I’d be able to eat this again” crossed with something Aelianus had never been able to place.

He thought he knew it now.  The look was that of “I wish she were here to share it with me.”  Aelianus had seen that look many times in the eight months that followed.  He’d known, as everyone else did, that it had been Commander Shepard ‘at fault’ for the destruction of the mass relay … and that was not a subject that came up frequently at the dinner table.

Garrus had spoken of his chase after Saren Arterius alongside the human Spectre; he’d spoken of returning to Spectre training and C-Sec after the completion of that mission; he’d spoken of going to Omega in frustration after the Commander had died.  Or dropped off the map.  Or whatever had happened.  He’d described the fight against the Collector threat.  And then he’d spoken about the Reapers, and how the massive legend wove its way through his stories.

It had taken a lot of proof for Aelianus to believe any of it.  But believe it he had, and in the end he was glad he did, as Palaven wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had without his son’s tireless work.

But Garrus had never said anything about being involved with the Commander.  Aelianus couldn’t help but wonder why.  Was this a fluke?  Blowing off steam?  He knew turian-human couples didn’t happen often, but he knew by reputation the Commander’s strength, and he had no doubt that she was open-minded enough – and strong enough – to engage in sexual relations with a turian.  It wasn’t infrequent on Hierarchy ships, and while he knew fraternization was technically disallowed on Alliance ships, he was sure it happened anyway.

Of course the whole thing was patently impossible.  The doctor had even said so.  No one knew what was going on.  The only two people who _might_ know were either in a coma or on the other side of a dormant mass relay.

Still, Garrus should have told him _something_.  If there was anything to tell.

Aelianus had fought in the Relay 314 Incident.  He’d never quite trusted humans, but he’d worked with some good ones – just like he’d worked with some bad turians.  He didn’t trust humanity any more than he really trusted batarians.  They didn’t quite function in his worldview.

His son knew of his dislike of the Spectres, that much was certain.  But would that have stayed Garrus’ hand?

All the fights he’d had with his son flashed through his mind, and Aelianus groaned.  Of course it would have.  Damn it.  Damn it, damn it, damn it.  This was his own damn fault.  Of course his son wouldn’t have felt like he could tell his father about his relationship with his Commander.  His human commander.  Who was a Spectre. 

Aelianus sighed.  Maybe it was time to re-evaluate his worldview … 


	18. You Look Like Her

Hannah Shepard was leaning against the counter of the small galley kitchen in her daughter’s ship, nursing a late-night cup of coffee after her long and intense day of engineering alongside Tali’Zorah, pondering the logistics of outfitting each ship in the fleet with mass relay communication circuits, when the doors to the main battery slid open. She watched the tall, lanky turian emerge from the shadows out of the corner of her eye, her mug raised to her lips.

Garrus walked down the length of the corridor, and spoke as he passed her. “You know, Shepard, all this coffee late at night is going to keep you awake even longer than usual.”

Hannah chuckled softly. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

The turian pulled up short as she replied, having just passed the counter. He looked over his shoulder at the human woman, his mandibles tight against his face – and then his eyes seemed to clear, and his mandibles fell limply. “Oh. Admiral. Damn it. I’m sorry, I—I didn’t think…”

Hannah lowered her mug and smiled at Garrus. “It’s fine, Legate. It’s late, it’s dark in here, and I look a lot like my daughter.”

Garrus simply stood there, hands at his sides, looking utterly lost. Hannah put her mug down on the counter and turned back to the cupboards. “You look like you need someone to talk to,” she said. “Can I make you a cup of _rylke_?” The turian word fell from her tongue like silk.

Garrus pulled a stool away from the outside edge of the counter and perched on it. “I’d love one, yeah.” He scratched at his temples with his talons, then sank onto his elbows, his forehead in his hands.

Hannah let him sit in silence as she prepared the turian drink – crush the freeze-dried grains, mix with water to make a paste, warm it, fill with more water and stir until smooth, warm it up again. She set the steaming mug in front of Garrus and then pulled a stool of her own out and perched on it herself.

“Drink, it’ll make you feel better.” She nudged the mug towards him.

He lifted his head and took the mug, wafting the vapour towards him. “Mm. Smells awfully good even without the _lythe_ milk.”

“I imagine you ran out of that months ago.” A sip of coffee.

“Long before London. Never enough time, plus the supply lines went to hell. You can still make a half-decent cup with water. Though even Shepard couldn’t make a cup of _rylke_ this well.” He quirked a brow plate at the older woman as he sipped from his own mug.

Hannah laughed. “I had a close turian friend for several years – I was a backstage lead on the designs for the original Normandy, what with my engineering expertise. Obviously we kept that quiet once my daughter was chosen to command the ship – though since it was a Council appointment, it didn’t seem too nepotistic … plus she’d already made her own name for herself, of course. Anyway, Livinius and I had many a late night working on the plans for this girl’s predecessor, and I learned how to make a decent cup of _rylke_ – and he learned how to make a decent cup of coffee.”

Garrus looked up from his cup. “You were the human lead who worked with Livinius Tarrigon?”

Hannah nodded. “Indeed I was. An incredible honour to work with him. His knowledge of ship design was second to none. I learned a lot from him.”

Garrus shook his head. “I never knew. Shepard never mentioned it.”

“I doubt she would have. She had a lot of other things on her mind.”

“True.”

The two soldiers sat in silence for several minutes, each occupied with their drink and their thoughts. It was Hannah who finally broke the silence, setting her mug down quietly on the counter.

“Legate Vakarian, may I ask you a question I’m sure you’ve answered many times before?”

Garrus raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Please, Admiral, just call me Garrus. That title is far above me these days.”

“Then call me Hannah, Garrus.”

The turian nodded. “Alright. What can I answer for you, Hannah?”

“What happened on Earth?”

She could see the change in his demeanour instantly. His mandibles sagged, his shoulders dropped, his hands fell loose on the counter. His eyes threatened to slip away into space, but he brought himself back to stare into her own eyes, and then he spoke.

“You mean before the explosion.”

“I mean whatever you know. I want to know what happened to my daughter.”

The sentence seemed to cause him physical pain – he hid it well, but Hannah saw the flinch in his brow plates and the twitch in his hands. She thought she heard the faintest of whimpers, but she decided to chalk that one up to the overtaxed systems of the ship.

“I wish I knew, Admiral—” He checked himself. “Hannah. I wish I knew.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

He took his mug in his hands, and she could see they were almost trembling.

“She was going for the beam to get into the Citadel. She was going to activate the Crucible and stop the Reapers. I … I got taken out by a concussive round, I had no shields left, it hit me mostly in the chest but it clipped my helmet and… I passed out. When I woke up I was on the Normandy, in the med bay, and we were tearing through space, headed for the Charon relay.”

“Why?”

Garrus shook his head. “Joker said it was on orders from the Commander, relayed via her omnitool. He couldn’t get a lock on the location of the signal, but her identity codes checked out, and it was triple-encoded, so he’d trusted they were good orders.”

“So you don’t know what actually happened on the ground.”

“No, ma’am.” He took a long gulp of his drink.

“She sent me the suggestion to get past the relay, too. About ten minutes before it all went to hell, I think. The suggestion seemed strange, but she’s always been a better tactician than I was – so I went. I’m glad I did. This sector could have gotten messy fast.”

Garrus nodded, then stayed silent.

“You’ve been awfully quiet lately, Vakarian.”

He made an unintelligible sound in the back of his throat, then glanced up at her. “Didn’t know it was that obvious.”

“Tali’Zorah told me she was concerned. You’d been a strong leader – I understand my daughter made you ex-oh – but since you’ve gotten back into charted space, you’ve been withdrawing. Garrus—” The older woman took a sip of her coffee. “May I be frank with you, soldier to soldier?”

He hesitated. “Go ahead.”

“Garrus, I’ve seen the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder firsthand. We live incredibly tough lives. Even when you’re just an engineer, you lose friends. When you step into command … you lose good men and women you’re responsible for.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “The nightmares aren’t just coming for you. You are not alone.”

The turian felt like he’d been shot somewhere around his stomach, and copious amounts of medi-gel had numbed the wound. His grip on his mug tightened and he swallowed hard.

“Post-traumatic … stress disorder.” He mulled the idea over, his nerves so taut they could sing, the numbness below his ribcage continuing even as he began to realize his heart was racing. “Turians have a different name for that … the boot camp term for it is ‘general’s shakes’. Among the veterans it’s better known as ‘field nightmares’. I … I confess I haven’t read enough to really… know, Admiral. Hannah. Sorry. Damn.” He looked down and saw his hands shaking. He put the mug down as carefully as he could and laid his hands on the counter, staring into the half-empty drink.

Hannah gazed across at him, coffee in her right hand, left arm resting across her waist. She waited silently, watching the younger turian – barely older than her daughter, damn it made her feel old – try to get himself under control. After several seconds, she spoke very quietly.

“Have you spoken with Karin?”

Garrus looked up and met her eyes. “I… No. I – honestly, I swear, I just thought I was tired. I thought the … I thought the hallucinations were that I was just _tired_. I didn’t even think about…well, no, I did, but…”

He felt like he was going to start keening if he kept talking. He was desperately glad that humans couldn’t hear subvocals, because his were climbing rapidly into the range of severe anguish and suffering and it wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t control it anymore—

“I—I didn’t think—I can’t be having field nightmares, I’m not really in command, I’m just – just standing in. This isn’t—this isn’t my ship. These aren’t my people. I’m not _commanding_ them. I’m their friend. I’m their ally. I have their back, I have—I had—I had her back. I had … her …”

He dropped his head. He couldn’t look at those eyes. So close but so far, just the wrong shade, just the wrong shape, so close, he couldn’t look … 

“I’ve been fighting for three years, I’m so tired, I’m _so_ tired. The dreams—sometimes they’re on the field – but sometimes it’s… it’s…”

Oh Spirits he couldn’t say that in front of Hannah. Fuck. _Fuck_. He had to keep talking. The words were just falling out. He couldn’t stop now. But he couldn’t say that.

“It’s not always so bad, when I can get a good night’s sleep. Then I’m okay. Then I don’t see—then I don’t think things. It’s okay. I’m okay. I can handle it. She told me she needed… someone she could trust. Spirits, Shepard, she trusted me, she _trusted_ me, I can’t let her down _now_ , I can’t—I can’t—I can’t fall apart, she trusted me to save them, to keep them going, to keep them safe, to—do—to do what… to do what she… could… did…”

He stared at the cold metal. He blinked. Turians weren’t much for crying but it was taking all his self-control not to collapse on the counter and shriek out his loss, his longing, his pain … Turian funerals were loud and chaotic. A race that spent most of its time as carefully ordered as possible … when a turian went to pieces, there was a lot of noise involved. Things got broken. On the battlefield, pain could be compartmentalized. You could work it out on the training ground later. But true loss … there were soundproof rooms on turian battleships.

He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t. He had to hold on.

“ _She trusted me_. I have to keep going. I can’t…” His voice had dropped impossibly low, grinding out the words in a deep bass, his subvocals sounding to him like he was shredding scrap metal with his bare talons.

He felt a cool hand on his right shoulder, and he inhaled sharply, startled. He looked up, and the admiral was no longer across the island from him, her cup abandoned on the counter. He looked to his right, and saw her standing beside him, her head bent, her left hand on his shoulder, her right on the island.

“Garrus.” Her voice was quiet, and low. It sounded like Shepard when she was trying to tell him something particularly important and personal, or something incredibly dangerous.

One more and his heart would crack, and he’d just die. He’d just keel over on the floor in the mess hall and _die,_ and he could finally be _free_ , he could finally _sleep_ , he could _see Shepard again_ —

“In all the time I’ve known her, my daughter has _never_ made a decision lightly, nor halfway.” The hand on his shoulder squeezed lightly. “If she chose you to be her executive officer, and trusted you with secondary command of her _ship_ and her _crew –_ then, Garrus Vakarian, you are as deserving of your title as I am of the title of Admiral. And I went through _hell_ to get this rank, whether I would have chosen it myself or not.”

“My daughter isn’t infallible,” she continued, “but she’s a damn good judge of character. You _earned_ her trust. And _now_ , right now, in this moment, soldier, you have earned a _rest_.”

Funny, he didn’t feel like he was dying. He felt like the pain in his heart was … lessening. He felt lighter.

“You have been to hell and back more times than I can count. You have just lost most of your planet, a good portion of your people, probably more friends than there will ever be time to properly mourn, and the galaxy is holding on by the tips of its fingers. But, Garrus Vakarian, Executive Officer of the Normandy, if it weren’t for you and your crew, _we wouldn’t be here to talk about it_. And you just limped in from uncharted space where I’m pretty sure the shit you were eating wouldn’t have met MRE standards, and you want to _keep going?_ ”

Part of Garrus’ brain noted that the admiral was clearly hitting her stride. You had officers who were good at pep talks, and then you had officers who could make you get up when you’d lost more blood than you had left and beat the living daylights out of the enemy.

… And then, of course, you had Commander Shepard, who’d managed to get the Council to listen to her.

He was beginning to suspect that Shepard senior could have convinced a bunch of battle-hardened batarian mercenaries to play hopscotch without having to point a really big gun at them.

“The war is over. It is time to rebuild. And while you’re stuck in this dead-end system waiting for us engineers to shoehorn our way into some ancient technological shit to get us all home, _you,_ good and faithful soldier, _you_ get to take a break.”

He shuddered softly, feeling something deep within him release. He whimpered softly, trying oh-so-hard to clamp down on it so Hannah wouldn’t hear.

When Hannah spoke again after several seconds of silence, her voice was soft and gentle. “I know you feel like you’re not supposed to, but you’re allowed to cry. It’s okay. You’ll get no judgment from me.”

The elder Shepard put her arm around the young turian’s shoulders as he started to keen, hiding his face in his hands, his elbows on the table.


	19. Highly Classified Everything

Somewhere, in a burnt-out, half-collapsed building along the southwestern shores of South America, a dark-haired woman bent over a tarnished, shoddy computer console, her clothes ripped but still shapely, her heels held together with combat cement, her pile of scrap metal dusty, her gun gleaming.

She watches the skies on the grainy display on her monitor, poring over the movements of the many ships which remain in geosynchronous orbit around her race’s home planet, still smoking even five months after the battle to determine its destiny. She switches back and forth between that and a log of communications she has intercepted, carefully storing all the important data in her personal omnitool, and sending dispatches to her remaining agents around the globe.

About a year ago, she quit her job.

There is a particular saying that runs through her mind whenever she thinks of her old employer: “heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

It wasn’t that she’d _loved_ him.

It was that she’d _respected_ him.

And now, she was cleaning up his mess, picking up the bits and pieces of the organization that she’d once called home.

Her name is Miranda Lawson. 

And you’d better get out of her way.

* * *

 

“Councillor. Please excuse the intrusion; I know this is not the best of times.”

“What can I do for you, Praetor? You know you are always welcome in my office.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Councillor.”

“We must conserve what remnants of the Hierarchy we can, Praetor. It is in our best interests, I believe, as we will be able to rebuild our society far more easily if we can sort out where we all fit.”

“I agree wholeheartedly.”

“Can I offer you a cup of _rylke_? You look … concerned.”

“Ha. An interesting choice of words. Yes, if you are offering, I will gladly accept. I wish I could say this were a simply social call.”

“I understand. In the days following war nothing is ever truly social, and yet it is then that we need it most.”

“Were it so easy, Councillor.”

“Indeed, Praetor.”

The two turians looked at each other over the warming crucible, green eyes meeting green, white markings to navy.

“Sparatus.”

“Aelianus.”

The quiet acknowledgement of friendship and support in dark days passes between their eyes.

“Has there been any progress on the relays?”

“No. I believe half the technicians and engineers in the system are working to restore power to the Charon relay – the other half are trying to restore communications beyond the orbit of Mars.”

“Damn.”

Sparatus’ dark gray fringe bobbed in agreement as he pours an ivory-coloured, creamy liquid into the crucible.

Aelianus’ eyes widened slightly. “Sparatus, I’m honoured. Surely you must not have very much _lythe_ milk left.”

The white-marked turian glanced up. “I ration it very, very carefully. And for you, Aelianus, I’d even bring out the _conditum_.”

Aelianus bowed his head. “It is truly an honour.”

Sparatus laughed slightly as he turned to a small cupboard, taking out a vacuum-sealed canister, which he popped open to reveal the small grains of _rylke_. “Aelianus, we have been friends since boot camp. Enough with the pleasantries due our stations. What is mine is yours, and you know that.”

An observer would swear that the blue-marked turian’s eyes twinkled as his mandibles spread wide. “And your son? Will I ever win him for my daughter?”

Sparatus snorted – an odd sound, coming from a turian, but there you are. “If I recall correctly, my son was terrified of your daughter, and with good reason.”

“I know she’s somewhat frightening in the morning, but really, if you get a cup of _rylke_ in her hand she’s alright…” Aelianus said innocently.

“Yes, yes, and her impeccable record on the Blackwatch shooting ranges, as well as her long and storied battle record, have nothing to do with it.”

“So she’s a good soldier—”

“My _dear_ friend,” Sparatus interrupted, “your most talented daughter greeted my son with something along the lines of, ‘you should really plan your approaches better, I could have killed you from the time you turned the corner five blocks away – and I couldn’t do so earlier only because the drainage vent was blocked’. The poor man was paralyzed.”

Aelianus laughed. “She gets it from her mother.”

Sparatus sobered almost instantly. “Have you heard anything from Rannadril?”

Aelianus exhaled slowly. “No. The salarians went off-net very, very early in the war, though they warned us they were doing so in order to avoid notice. I do not remember seeing any reports of Reaper activity in those clusters: it is possible that they were missed. I do not know.”

Sparatus reached across and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I am sorry, Aelianus.”

The other turian shook his head. “Thank you, Sparatus. I am hopeful, but I cannot let myself dwell on things which I cannot change.”

“Of course.” The iron-gray turian turned away and took a seat on the bench against the wall while the dark-gray turian ladled several spoons of grains into a pestle. He took up a pestle and began to grind them gently. “What is it you wanted to talk about, since you said this was not solely a social call?”

Aelianus worried at his tongue slightly with the edge of a tooth. “I wish to discuss the current assets of the Hierarchy within the bounds of the Sol system.”

Sparatus was silent, carefully dividing the powder between two heavy stone bowls and mixing it with a miniscule amount of cold milk. The other turian stared across the room at an ancient-looking scroll hanging on the wall, held with a magnet.

“What sort of assets are you asking about, Aelianus? We are … short on everything.”

“I am aware.”

Further silence, as the turian councillor carefully tilted the crucible to pour steaming liquid into one bowl, then the other. He stirred the two bowls equally, then turned off the warming element and crossed the room, handing one bowl to the turian praetor before sitting across from him in a chair, the only other piece of furniture in the small room apart from the desk.

“You seem reluctant to speak, Aelianus. The room is as secure as it can be, if that helps.”

Aelianus nodded slightly, then dipped his head to smell the _rylke_. “Exquisite as always, Sparatus.”

Sparatus waved a hand in dismissal. “I bring the ancient tools with me for a reason. But thank you. Now, friend, speak.”

Another nod. “Yes. Well. It is … an odd request. But do we have a medical ship that stocks paracetimium acholinisterase alpha?”

The councillor blinked, sipped his _rylke_ , and stared at his friend. “I would imagine so. It’s not … frequently needed, women _do_ make it themselves, so … why didn’t you simply ask your ship… _oh_. You said…” His brow plates went up.

“Yes. Alpha. Not beta.”

“Aelianus, what in the name of the Spirits are you _talking_ about? Why would you need the _levo—_ ”

Aelianus took a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you is such highly classified information that if you so much as _breathe_ a word to _anyone_ —”

“Especially Tevos and Valern, am I correct?”

“Absolutely. Beyond a doubt. I am here as a _turian_ , not as a member of the galactic community.”

“Consider it off the record then.” 

“Good. Sparatus—” Aelianus’ voice caught, and his subvocals crooned softly, conveying anxiety, nervousness, and intense pride. “Sparatus, I’m going to become a grandfather.”

* * *

 

“Now, son, tell me what you saw when you touched her.”

“I didn’t _see_ anything. I felt … I felt … it was horrible at first, sir, all red and painful and dangerous. Like … like she was trying to warn me. I don’t know. I was more scared than when I saw my first Reaper. But then – after ten seconds – maybe eleven? – I saw … no, I _felt_ … safe. Secure. Like she was holding me, cradling me, like it was all going to be okay.”

“How long had it been since you’d slept, Private?”

“Maybe six hours? The admiral had us all on a strict sleep schedule.”

“I see. Thank you for your time.”

“Of course, sir. May I ask a question, sir?”

“You may.”

“Is Commander Shepard alright? Is she awake yet?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you any information on that, Private. I hope I can soon. Thank you, again." 

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

 

Doctor Fallujah stood up straight and stretched, her vertebrae popping as she realigned herself. She yawned widely and cocked her head, staring at the woman encased in metal before her.

Footsteps behind her. She turned. David Anderson was standing in the doorway, limbs no longer encased in casts, sidearm tucked in his holster, very much in need of a shave.

“Doctor Fallujah.”

“Admiral. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m off Earth for a week, thought I’d come see my former ex-oh. How is she?”

Emma turned back to the hospital bed. “She’s fine, all things considered. We’ve been able to remove small parts of the machinery encasing her, but very little overall. Her vitals are strong, her brain waves are normal most of the time, and the little one is thriving, thanks to the help from the turians. Really, now we just wait. Aelianus says turian pregnancies are roughly forty-five human weeks, and as far as we can _tell_ the child is developing at about that rate, but we really have no idea. We don’t even really know how we’re going to get this child out. We’re hoping that the machinery doesn’t get in the way, because once we try to start taking _that_ off, usually her vitals go nuts, and so do the child’s.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“You’re telling me.”

They stood in silence.

“What do you mean, her brain waves are normal _most_ of the time?”

“Ah.” The doctor turned back to the admiral. “There have been a handful of ‘incidents’ similar to your own and to that of Private First Class Einarson. Mostly due to inadvertent contact, never during an operation. During those moments, her brain waves either go off the charts, or go completely silent.”

“… What?”

“I know. I know. We’ve kept careful records. She’s never shown any signs of being harmed when these incidents happen, and she’s never changed afterwards. No change in the child, either. Her brain waves go crazy, and our lights flash, our systems flicker. Her brain waves fall, and the lights dim, and everything’s slow. It’s very odd, Admiral.”

“Could I take a look at those reports? 

“Of course. I’ll send them to your omnitool.”

* * *

 

The days dragged on, ever so slowly. Liara spent her time with Tali, mostly, helping with the data collection and organization from the mass relay. Right now, she was collating the overnight data and cross-referencing it with the past three days’ data, trying to find the right number. She wasn’t entirely sure what the right number _did_ , but Tali said it should be between 0 and 65534, so that was what Liara was looking for.

Meanwhile, Tali was hitting her head slowly against the doorpost.

“Why won’t it work? _Why_ won’t it work? Why won’t the damn thing _work_?”

“What won’t work?”

Both the asari and the quarian looked up in surprise as the flanged turian voice came from the doorway.

Garrus had stopped in front of the doorway to the erstwhile boardroom, clearly on his way to the war room.

“Hello Garrus,” said Liara, “I don’t think I’ve seen you in three days.”

The tall turian scratched the back of his head lightly. “I … had a talk with Doctor Chakwas. She … recommended I get some sleep. And … then she insisted.”

Liara kept herself from smiling, and was incredibly jealous of the quarian across the room who was probably grinning like an idiot behind her mask.

“I see,” replied Liara. “And where are you off to now?”

“I was going to get some data for Admiral Shepard from the war room. But you sound like you’re having problems, Tali.”

The quarian admiral stepped back from the doorpost and addressed the turian. “Yes. It looks like I have all the right data – the frequency, the identifier, the code – but the damn thing won’t turn on. I’ve got Liara hunting for a conditional qualifier which might work as a _one-time_ activation, but, you know, I’d like to actually _turn it on for good_.”

Garrus tilted his head. “You’re sure the numbers should work?”

“Positive. Well, as positive as you can be when you haven’t got a clue.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

Tali shrugged. “Be my guest.”

Garrus entered and leaned over the main console, tapping gently at the keys.

“Oh, I see your problem.”

Liara could swear that Tali was raising an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“I need to do some calibrations.”

“You son of a _bosh’tet_ , it can’t be that simple.”


	20. A Spare "Hail Mary"

“Hannah.”

“Garrus.”

“Can I make you coffee?”

“Did Shepard teach you how?”

“… Yes.”

“I’ll make the coffee.”

Another late night, another dim mess hall, another pair of mugs.

A human woman nearing sixty (or just past – but she’d never tell you), a turian man just past thirty.

Steaming mugs of recycled, filtered water and freeze-dried plants.

Connection.

“I didn’t know Shepard couldn’t make coffee.”

“Ha. She makes coffee like her father made coffee. Way too strong, way too coarse. Not nearly enough finesse. It’s strange, you’d think she’d be better at the whole detail thing, being a tech and a sniper.”

A sip of _rylke_. “We spend more time in our circuitry and in our scopes than on our food.”

A sip of coffee. “Fair point. How are you doing?”

“Better, I think.” A talon tracing circles on the table. “I think Tali is going to crack the relay tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“I recalibrated her frequency modulators. She’d forgotten to take into account the fact that the Normandy isn’t quite as stationary as a mass relay.”

“That seems like the sort of thing you’d remember if you lived on a ship your whole life.”

“It’s funny, the things you forget. Anyway, she had to rewrite some code, and I told her to take a break and get some rest.”

“Good of you.”

“She needed it.”

“So did you.”

“Yes, I did. Thank you, for that.”

“You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do for the person taking care of Shepard’s crew.”

“Why don’t you use her first name?”

Hannah smiled. “She never liked it. She thought ‘Shepard’ sounded cooler.”

“Ha. That’s … very Shepard.”

“Yes. Her father thought it was very cute.”

“She never talks about her father.”

“He wasn’t around very much.” More coffee; swallowed. A quiet thought. “He’s one of the Alliance’s top infiltration agents. My ship was his base camp, but when Shepard was growing up, he was almost always gone. When he was home, you never saw a more loving father. She learned very young not to talk about where Daddy was – when she even knew. She understood very early. She’s always been smart.”

Garrus nodded. “My sister is a Blackwatch operative. I never know where she is, but she always shows up right when you need her.”

Hannah laughed. “That sounds a lot like Robert.”

“Where was Robert when the war broke out?”

A swallow, a pause, a breath. “He was on a deep-cover assignment.”

The tone in her voice made Garrus’ heart feel heavy. “Where?”

“I don’t know where – but I know what he was infiltrating, and…” She sighed heavily. “I’m going to give it a year. After that, well, the Alliance presumes deep-cover operatives dead six months past the expected final return date. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and an extra six months. We had a good run of it … thirty-five years, give or take? But…” She gazed down at her coffee.

Garrus shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”

She looked up and smiled softly. “I don’t regret a thing.”

He dared himself to meet her eyes. “No?”

“No.” Her tone was firm. “Robert was everything I could have asked for and more. He was kind, protective, gentle, smart, and funny. Whenever he was on furlough, we had to be very quiet about it, but we had an incredible marriage, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. I’ve always been an independent woman, and Robert was supportive of that. We existed in our own worlds, and created a mutual one whenever we were together.”

Garrus felt like he couldn’t quite breathe. “I … I understand.”

They broke eye contact, each looking at the remaining liquid in their mugs, and remembered their partners with equal parts joy and pain.

“Hannah?”

“Yes?”

“Did Shepard ever consider settling down?” It wasn’t a perfect question, but he knew he had to have this conversation eventually, and being as it was probably more than likely that Shepard was… well, he might need to do it now rather than… later.

Hannah looked up and away over his shoulder, considering the question, mug against her cheek. “I’m honestly not sure. She kept much to herself. I know she had a few crushes on other spacer kids, but nothing ever panned out – and once she enlisted, then got into eye-see-tee – en-level training, you know—” Garrus nodded. “Well, there wasn’t time, I suppose. I know she had her fair share of raps on the head for ‘fraternization’” — the older woman made air quotes with the fingers of her left hand — “so she wasn’t lacking in company, but she never… never stuck with anybody. Not that I knew of, anyway. Why do you ask?”

Oh. Um. He hadn’t expected her to turn it around. That was an oversight. He managed to shrug. “Just curious. She was friends with all of us, but never seemed like she… needed someone else.” Oh, ow.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t say it. It hurt, it ached, but … no, he’d keep silent, for now.

Maybe … maybe no one would need to know.

Maybe he would eventually be able to grieve … alone.

He forced himself to swallow more _rylke_. “What’s the state of the Orizaba? How much of your systems did the blast take out?”

Just talk, Vakarian … just talk …

* * *

 

The entire ship was silent, apart from the sound of the engines running them in a slow orbit around the mass relay. In fact, Joker was pretty sure every person in the cluster was probably holding their breath as the quarian admiral scrolled through her code one last time. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, pretending for all the world like he wasn’t at all concerned – after all, it wasn’t like this was the best chance they had at getting home.

He heard the filters on her helmet whir oh-so-softly as she breathed in. She held it for a moment, and then the whir seemed a little louder as she exhaled. She took her hands off the console, and dropped her head. He saw the light on her helmet die and he knew she was talking to herself. Probably praying. He sure felt like it right now.

He’d had the chance to have dinner with Tali the night before; EDI had convinced him to take a short break (it wasn’t like they were flying anywhere fast, but he hated leaving the cockpit) and Tali had just happened to be taking a break at the same time. He was a half-decent tech (he had a lot of time to read and run sims while not actively flying, and porn was only interesting for so long, really), and so he had asked her how it was going.

As far as he had understood, she knew her code would do _something_ , and while she could only affect this particular relay and the ones directly connected to it … well, she said it seemed like a 50/50 chance, based on her current knowledge, that either this relay would activate for good … or die. Period.

So he understood her trepidation, and though he wouldn’t really call himself a religious kind of guy, he offered up a spare “Hail Mary” … well, the first few words anyway, he didn’t really remember the whole thing. But it’s the thought that counts, right?

Her hand shot out and palmed the broadcast control, and then it shot right back to her other hand, and then she began wringing her hands tightly. The movement happened so fast that Joker could have sworn he’d imagined it, except that his baby started making new sounds.

The eezo core revved and the floor of the ship trembled a tiny bit more. It probably would have been unnoticeable to a non-spacer, or to someone who didn’t spend their entire day on the Normandy, but everyone in the cockpit inhaled slightly, noticing the shimmer of movement. Then the windows exploded in swirls of light and energy, the shielding crackling in tune with the frequencies Tali had programmed. It sounded a little bit like rain, actually, as the currents glanced off the reinforced armour and back into the energy shell. Very quiet rain. (Joker thought the Commander would have liked it. Then he cut that train of thought short.)

No one spared more than a cursory glance at the windows, though, because everyone was glued to the feed showing the image of the mass relay, which was still dark.

Tali had said it would take about ten seconds. One for the ship to pull support to nonessential systems. One for the core to spin up to full power. One for the shields to reach the full frequency. One for the second broadcast push to propagate through the shields’ emissions. Two for it to reach the relay. One for the relay to turn its reception feed on in response. One for it to identify and accept the code. One for the relay to turn on all its systems. And one last second for it to start the transport mechanism.

Joker thought they’d maybe made it to five so far.

Five. Nothing.

Four. Nothing.

Three. Was that a light? Right there?

Two. Maybe another one? That little tiny point?

One. Oh please God, if You’re there …

Blinding light, deafening sound, the sensation of having your insides sucked through a straw, and your eyes can’t process what you see on the screen for that split second—

Joker’s eyes snapped to his outside feeds and his instincts took over, weaving the Normandy through the rubble and debris which came at them all too quickly. They were moving so fast it barely took seconds before he could gently bring the engines back down so they came to a relative halt, floating gently through space. The crackling light from the shields died slowly, and Joker saw what he’d already seen on his navigation console – the familiar points of light and shapes that felt _right._

It felt like the Commander should say it.

But, well, that … you know.

He tried to keep the crack out of his voice.

“Welcome home, guys…”


	21. Duct Tape Logistics

“Admiral Hackett, sir. We’re receiving long-range scout probe reports that the Charon relay is online, and that a ship matching the Normandy’s readings has come through and is heading for Earth.”

“Well. We’d best get out the welcome wagon, then. And notify Councillor Sparatus, if you would.” 

“Aye aye, sir.”

* * *

 

The cruise in to the inner orbits of the Sol system was slow. Their supply of sub-light fuel was precious, and Joker carefully calculated the route so as not to waste anything. They salvaged what they could along the way, the remains of ships from every fleet in the galaxy strewn through the emptiness between planets. There were more than a few murmured prayers and foreheads rested against bulkheads as each member of the crew – especially the human crew – began the difficult process of accepting the losses incurred during the war.

The war had been fast. Very fast. Less than a year had passed between the initial invasion of Earth and the final battle. For everyone on board, it had felt like a never-ending state: one thing after another, one more report of casualties, one more friend lost. In the heat, the full-tilt sprint of the Reaper War, with so many of the people running the Normandy also helping to run the war on their home fronts, many of the reports had been just that: numbers. Now, seeing wreckage without the flashing lights of battle amongst it … it started to hit home.

It took just over twelve hours to reach Earth orbit. Under standard conditions, it was a far shorter trip for a ship like the Normandy, but no one wanted to rush things and have the ship fall apart – so rather than take the trip at the regular three-quarters sublight (a six hour trip, give or take), he took it at a hair over a third sublight average, and the ship still whined. EDI was awfully quiet, keeping them all safe. He was awfully quiet, his fingers drumming silently on the arm of his chair. (The spot was nearly worn through.) The crew was quiet. Everyone was nervous.

No one knew quite what they were in for.

No one minded a few more hours to think, to rest, to cry.

Jeff paused mentally when he saw Luna in his long-range scanners, crossing the orbit of Mars. He couldn’t afford the fuel to slow the ship down any more than he had expended between Saturn and Jupiter’s orbits, but he would have if he could. This was the point of no return.

He tapped the ship comm and cleared his throat. “Twenty minutes to Earth orbit.”

There was a soft increase of movement in the ship, though no one spoke in acknowledgement.

Joker breathed in deeply and began the final deceleration sequence, scanning ahead to determine the best trajectory to geosynchronous orbit. It felt surreal. It felt like he was coming home, oddly, since he’d only ever been to Earth a handful of times. He’d heard people talk about Earth as if it were home to all humanity, and he’d always thought they were being overly sentimental – but now, now he got it.

EDI spoke, softly, in his earpiece. “Jeff, I have a question.”

“Go for it, EDI.”

“The crew have been unusually sombre for the past twelve hours. Over the previous months, their expectations and hopes for returning to the Sol system have shown remarkable resiliency. The atmosphere on the ship while we were in the Exodus Cluster was considerably lighter. I do not understand why they are not more excited that they are returning home.”

Jeff let his head flop back against his headrest, the final trajectory complete. He watched the little dots move across his console as he pondered how best to answer. 

He finally spoke. “I wish the Commander were here to answer this one for you.”

“I do not understand.”

Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know, EDI, this is just a tough one. Yeah, we’ve all been looking forward to getting home, but … now we actually are. We haven’t had any good news yet, but no one’s had any news – and now we’re here, and stuff’s awfully quiet. No welcoming committee or anything. Just … dust and echoes. Y‘know?”

“I believe I may understand now. Before we reached the Sol system, it was easier for the human crew to believe that the state of the colonized galaxy would be better than their worst-case scenarios. Now that we have arrived, they are no longer able to comfortably believe this, and feel uncomfortable and unhappy about the losses suffered during the war.”

“Ow. Yeah. That’s pretty bang on, there.”

“I am sorry, Jeff.”

“Are you? No offense, EDI, but…” He could feel the back of his throat closing up; he could see Earth in the distance. Ten minutes. It looked … well, it looked mostly blue, actually. That was kind of nice.

“None taken, Jeff, and I see your point. Yes, I am sorry. Unhappiness and associated emotions in my friends cause a negative feedback loop in my programming. I do not wish to see you unhappy, and I am less productive as a result. I cannot understand on the level you do, but you may rest assured that I am concerned.”

“Thanks, EDI.”

“You are welcome, Jeff.”

They sat in silence for the final ten minutes, and Jeff noticed that many of the human crew members filtered one by one into the bridge to watch their arrival.

Five minutes before geosynchronous orbit, EDI spoke.

“We are being hailed.”

Joker exhaled slowly. “… Let’s hear it.”

Admiral Hackett’s voice came through the comm. “This is Admiral Steven Hackett of the Systems Alliance. Normandy SR-2, please confirm status.”

Joker looked over his shoulder at Kaidan, who nodded and stepped forward. “Admiral Hackett, this is Major Kaidan Alenko, confirming status of Normandy SR-2. Everyone we left with is alive, sir, and we’re holding out as well as can be expected.”

“Major Alenko. Good to hear from you. Any medical emergencies?”

“No, sir. Doctor Chakwas is a miracle worker.”

“Excellent. I presume the Normandy needs some work.”

“Whatever you can spare, sir. She’s holding together by the grace of God and a whole lot of duct tape.”

“I understand, son. Bring her in to Terra One. We can decide on further action once you’ve all had something decent to eat.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Hackett out." 

Kaidan nodded to Joker. The last three minutes was spent in silence, and they all watched as Jeff guided the Normandy into the mass-field clamps of Terra One, orbiting high above the equator.

* * *

 

Terra One was bustling with activity. Kaidan led the Normandy crew out through their docking bay, Garrus on his right and Joker on his left. Part of him had expected Terra One to be mostly deserted, but he realized that this was essentially humanity’s command base: London and Vancouver had been destroyed before his eyes, and he knew the Johannesburg HQ had been equally leveled. With Arcturus and Gagarin Stations gone to boot, this old spacedock was all they had left. Where else would they go?

He was silently surprised at how well it had held up, and at how many ships he had seen in orbit upon approach. He’d expected more carnage – but then, he had always been a bit of a pessimist.

The remaining crew of the Normandy numbered fifteen; sixteen, if you counted EDI. Javik had been on the ground on Earth when they’d had to leave the system; Grunt and Wrex had been with him. It felt strange to Kaidan to know that the entire crew of the Normandy (EDI’s mobile platform excepted) was walking behind him. Usually at least Joker and a private would be left on board; today, it was empty.

He saw Admiral Hackett and an aide standing in the hall ahead. Terra One was cramped, the most basic of service stations – not too far of an upgrade from the later-generation space stations of the previous century. Behind Hackett stood a pair of fully-armoured soldiers (in dress armour, Kaidan noted: not a safety precaution, just a formality).

He halted two meters from the admiral, stood at attention, and struck a sharp salute, knowing the Alliance crew would be in sync.

“Admiral Hackett, Major Kaidan Alenko, acting commander of the Normandy SR-2 reporting for duty, sir.” His speech was crisp and clear, his eyes focused just over the admiral’s shoulder.

“At ease, officers.” The ten Alliance officers swung into at-ease positions and waited silently. “Major, I hereby grant all Alliance crew of the Normandy SR-2 shore leave for ten days, at which point you will be debriefed and returned to duty should you so wish, or alternatives may be discussed. Non-Alliance crew are of course free to do as they please, though I would formally request a voluntary debriefing. I would suggest you all retire to the mess hall for a solid meal, and then get at least eight hours’ sleep. Accommodations have been sent to your omnitools; non-Alliance crew can speak with my aide for the best we can get you. Do you have any questions on behalf of your crew?”

Kaidan couldn’t help it. He glanced at the admiral’s eyes – Hackett was looking directly at him, his face unreadable. “…Yes, sir. I do. Is there any information available on the status of Staff Commander Shepard?” He could feel the tension peak. Everyone was desperate to know, but at the same time, would prefer not to …

Hackett’s response was automatic, measured and even. “That information is classified at this time, Major. You will be informed in due course. Now go get some food.” Damn, he was good. Kaidan exhaled, meeting the admiral’s eyes and nodding twice before looking over his shoulder and motioning with his head for them to head to the mess hall.

The group dispersed, Hackett moving forward to Kaidan, his aide at his side, the armoured officers leading the rest of the crew down the hall. Garrus, Liara, Tali, Gabby Daniels and Ken Donnelly hung back, the two human engineers looking a bit nervous, the three non-humans waiting patiently.

“Admiral Hackett,” began Donnelly, “would it be possible—”

“Ah, Engineer Donnelly. Yes.” Hackett looked to the Scottish man and nodded. “Yourself and Engineer Daniels are most welcome to join your Alliance crewmates in the hall. I have someone who’d like to speak with you when you’re prepared to do so, as well.”

“Aye, sir. Thank ye.” Hackett nodded. Donnelly turned to the woman beside him. “C’mon, Gabby, let’s get some grub. Y’think they have haggis?” Gabby punched him in the arm as they walked down the hall.

Six left in the hallway. Kaidan noticed that the bustle had died down; perhaps they’d arrived at shift change?

Hackett turned to the three non-humans, addressing Liara first. “Dr. T’Soni. A pleasure to see you again. There are several asari ships in orbit around Earth, making repairs and helping with rescue and rebuilding efforts. I have also been contacted by asari scientists who were on the Crucible team and who would be more than happy to welcome you if you need a place to stay.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” replied Liara. “I will make arrangements.”

“Of course. Might you be willing to meet with an Alliance intelligence officer for a debriefing in the near future?”

“Certainly.” Liara smiled.

“We’d appreciate it.” Hackett turned to Tali. “Admiral Zorah. There are currently two quarian ships within close range of Terra One; Admiral Xen is also in Earth orbit. Other quarian ships are aiding in the cleanup effort through the system and in our efforts to reactivate the Charon relay – though you seem to have beat us to the punch, as it were.”

Tali probably smiled behind her helmet. “I’d actually like to speak to Alliance engineering or science command about that – though I certainly plan to take a few days on a home ship and get some decent food.”

“We can make the necessary arrangements to provide you with a list of active engineering and science personnel in the system; I’m sure you’ll find the best person to talk to on your own.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

“My pleasure.” Hackett nodded to the quarian and to the asari, then flicked his eyes towards Garrus and Kaidan – then back at Liara and Tali.

Liara took the hint, and took Tali’s arm, leading her down the hall. “I’d like to look at that list too, Tali, if you wouldn’t mind …”

The grizzled admiral waited until the asari and the quarian were well down the hall and out of earshot before looking up at the turian whose mandibles were tight enough against his face that you’d swear they didn’t come off.

“Legate Vakarian.”

“Admiral.”

Hackett looked at Alenko. “Major.”

“Sir.”

“What I am about to tell you both cannot – under any circumstances – be repeated. To anyone. No exceptions. Are we clear?”

Kaidan inhaled slowly and exhaled gently. “Yes, sir.”

Garrus forced himself to breathe. “Understood.”

Hackett put his hands behind his back. He looked old, his chiseled features casting extra shadows over his face in the awkward spacedock lighting. He focused briefly somewhere between them both, then met Kaidan’s eyes, then Garrus’, then back to Kaidan.

“The Commander is alive.”

Garrus’ heart leapt in relief. She was alive!

Kaidan’s heart sank in dread. She wasn’t here.

“This is a tightly-controlled Alliance secret at this point. We are not releasing anydetails whatsoever to the public, or even to the general Alliance population. For her own safety, this is on a need-to-know basis, and right now only two dozen people in the entire galaxy need to know.”

Kaidan raised an eyebrow. “Sir? Is Commander Shepard in danger?”

Kaidan thought Hackett deliberately turned to meet Garrus’ eyes as he responded to Kaidan’s question. “No, Major, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

Garrus took a deep breath. “Admiral, may I ask you a question?”

“Certainly, Legate.”

“Why am I on the need-to-know list?”

Kaidan faltered. Of course it was an open secret that the Commander and Vakarian had been involved with each other. On the other hand, Garrus had a point: in this delicate political post-war situation, that was _not_ a good enough reason for him to know. So why, then?

Hackett didn’t answer for a moment. Then, appearing to choose his words very carefully, he said, “Major, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d suggest you get something to eat.”

Kaidan snapped to attention and fired off a salute. “Aye aye, sir.” He met Garrus’ eyes briefly, then walked away down the hall.

Garrus watched Kaidan turn the corner, then looked back down at the admiral.

“Legate, your father is in docking bay 8, down the hall the other way. I’d suggest you go talk to him.”

Garrus sputtered. “My father? Why is my—”

Hackett held up a hand. “All in good time, Vakarian. All in good time.”

“I—” Garrus shook his head. “Thank you, Admiral. I’ll … be in touch, I’m sure.”

He turned and walked down the hall, the sound of his footsteps on the hard metal barely drowning out the pounding of his heart.


	22. Father

Aelianus wished there were somewhere to sit in the cramped Alliance space station. The corridor he was standing in was not the easiest place to _wait_ for someone: it was designed for transit, not _waiting_.

Of course, Aelianus had never been a fan of waiting, either.

In all his years at C-Sec, he’d gained a reputation for the fastest by-the-book investigations. When his son had joined the force, he’d always been proud of Garrus’ drive to solve his cases – though he’d tried just as much to _encourage_ him to use by-the-book methods _for his own damn safety_ …

His heart leapt into his throat as he saw his son turn the corner, and his train of thought died instantly.

Spirits above was he thin. And the look in his eyes. He could see it from here, even though Garrus was still a hundred steps away: bright blue eyes piercing, cold gray plates outlined with slightly-faded deep navy … so _thin_. The way he _walked:_ tired, worn, a slight limp – a bullet wound to his right hip perhaps? His feet didn’t drag, his shoulders were perfectly square, but Aelianus could see fatigue in his movement: he’d watched this man grow up, helped his tiny shoulders square against the butt of a rifle designed for a turian at least five years older, lifted this man, his _son_ , up to the washbasin to clean his teeth … tucked thin blankets in around his cowl …

His son was staring at him like a half-dead man, walking down the hall like he owned it, the look in his eyes waiting for the worst of news.

“Garrus…” His son’s name fell from his mouth, almost unbidden, feeling choked: his subvocals, raw and anguished, betrayed his worry about his son’s state.

Garrus stopped, two steps from his father, the movement abrupt – like something had tugged him back. The look in his eyes changed, from determination to shock.

Aelianus hadn’t quite realized that Garrus had grown taller than him.

“Father.” The word sounded _unused_ , unfamiliar. Garrus’ subvocals were unsure – not frightened, not anxious, just unsure. Unconfident.

Aelianus put his hands on Garrus’ shoulders and held his gaze. “ _Son_.” His subvocals shifted from pain to care, worry, love. They’d been so cold over the years. Aelianus hadn’t ever really understood his son’s struggles – had thought, perhaps, in his hubris, that he knew better, knew more.

How un-turian of him.

Garrus stood for a second, indecisive. Then he awkwardly hugged Aelianus, and spoke, his subvocals so strong they almost broke the word in half – choking on the glottal in the middle of one of the oldest turian words.

“ _Father._ ”


	23. What Once Was Lost

They stood there for several seconds, reuniting, taking solace in the fact that they were both still alive – that the other was still alive. There were whispered subvocals, of the _I missed you_ sort, and the _I worried about you_ sort, and the _I’m so glad you’re alive_ sort – and the completely unvocalised (but very much known) _I love you_ sort.

Garrus felt peaceful for a moment, his arms around his father, realizing just how much the complete conviction that one was going to die _changes things_.

He was still angry with his father (there was a lot to be discussed about the many years, the many misunderstandings, the many fights), but for the first time in what felt like years he felt loved by his father and felt himself love in return. He’d known, of course, that his father had always cared, and he himself had always cared for his father. But there was a big difference between knowledge and _knowledge_.

His heart twisted as he thought of how his mother would describe it: the spirit of their love had returned.

He pulled back from Aelianus slightly, looking the other turian in the eye.

“Mom? Sol?” Underneath, _do I want to know?_

Aelianus looked him straight in the eye. _You couldn’t live with yourself not knowing._ “No contact from the medical facility. I spoke with your sister shortly before the attack but haven’t heard since.” _I’m sorry I don’t have more_.

Garrus took a deep breath and slowly nodded. “Okay.” _Thanks_.

There was a short silence before his father spoke again, drawing away, letting go of Garrus, looking him up and down. “Are you in good health?” _You look like hell._

Garrus shrugged. “A few months in uncharted space. Not much to eat.” _I’ve been worse._

“Not much here either.” _Sorry._

A wry grin. “I’ll survive.” _Better than what was out there._

His father moved one mandible out in a half-smile. _You’d better_. “I have quarters on the turian flagship in the sector, the _Acumen Ensium_. They’re small, but…”

“We’re soldiers. I’ll fit. Thanks, Dad. ”

Another silence. Garrus broke this one.

“Why are you here? I know you had to get off Palaven, but you’re retired … why’d they haul you out here?”

Aelianus smiled, his mandibles opening wide. “Well, there wasn’t really another place to go – nor any easy way to get out of Reaper-controlled space. We escaped on a scout ship from the _Acumen_ , and Sol managed to get a transport to a medship, then to her own squadron. I… well, I got drafted, more or less. I got put in charge of running the place day-to-day: with my old C-Sec investigation skills, piecing together a report on how the galaxy is working this particular hour is relatively easy. Went from senator to praetor, though technically I’m both since one’s solely military and the other is purely political.”

Garrus’ brow plates lifted. “Praetor, huh?”

“Yes, yes, I know all the implications. I look forward to your next conversation with the Primarch, by the way…”

Garrus heaved a sigh. “You know, all my life I’ve been trying to escape the Hierarchy…”

Aelianus laughed. “You can’t do it, son.”

“I know, I know. But you still haven’t really answered my question.”

“Oh?”

“Why are you _here?_ Just to … say hello?”

Aelianus’ expression dropped into seriousness. “Well, I can’t say I wasn’t looking forward to seeing you alive and well, but… I presume the admiral told you?”

“He told me that Shepard was alive. And then said I should go see you.”

A pregnant pause. Garrus noted that Aelianus was silencing his subvocals. “Ah,” he finally replied.

All the happiness and hope that had been building in Garrus from the time his father had first spoken slowly drained away.

“…What’s wrong." 

Aelianus looked over his shoulder into space for a moment, then back. “Perhaps you should come and see.”

* * *

 

It hadn’t taken them long to reach the hospital ship – the _Parigoria_. Garrus knew enough about human military history to recognize the red cross on the side of the ship, and his heart had sunk further.

She was alive, but she was in hospital … and no one was telling him anything. He was nervous, very very nervous, and he was already hurting. What if she wouldn’t…

They docked, and dismounted.

The _Parigoria_ was bright white: everything was clean and shining. Garrus couldn’t imagine the cleaning team’s daily responsibilities. After a war, nothing stayed this clean, especially hospitals. He continued to worry as the decontamination rays washed over him and he felt the familiar buzzing hum through his armour. He could see white- and blue-clad Alliance and civilian doctors, walking through corridors – not with haste, but with purpose. Usually they clutched at least one datapad.

He saw no stretchers. It had been a few months. There were probably more casualties than wounded, now that he thought about it.

His stomach clenched again.

A tense-looking young man at what looked like a reception station looked up at Aelianus. His mouth set in a thin, nervous line and he tapped at a datapad.

“You and your son are clear to visit, Senator,” the young man said. “You know where to go.”

“Thank you, James,” replied Aelianus. “Any change?”

James exhaled once before replying, glancing at Garrus. “…No, sir.”

Aelianus nodded and led Garrus down a hall. Garrus couldn’t help but notice the fully-armed security guards dressed in medic gear posted on either side of the hall. Unobtrusive to a civilian, perhaps, but not to a soldier.

Down the spotless hall. Patients in rooms; very, very quiet. Sometimes a conversation between doctors; once, crying.

Garrus’ throat began to clench, too.

Another pair of security guards up ahead, where the hallway turned.

They turned too.

This was a very short hallway; a single room opened off it. This was a hospital ship that served mainly military patients; he could tell from the layout, the defensible positions, the style of the lockers. It made sense to have easily-defensible rooms for patients who needed the extra layers of security for whatever reason. There was probably a direct docking clamp.

Which raised the question as to why they’d taken the long way, since this was obviously Shepard’s room.

A soft subvocalized trill from his father: _are you ready?_

He tried to speak and found he couldn’t. He subvocalized back instead, his tones wobbly and uncertain. _Could I live with myself if I wasn’t?_

Had it been deliberate on his father’s part? Would this have been too much of a shock if they’d docked with her room?

 As Aelianus opened the access panel next to the door and keyed in a code, Garrus’ heart skipped a beat.

_I never told you about Shepard._

A soft reply, vocalised, the low rumble underneath some cross between a reprimand and comfort. “No, you didn’t.”

The door opened. Garrus felt himself walk in as if on autopilot. She wasn’t in front of the door. Bad position for defence, of course. She would be to the center right, because the door slid right, and that would be the last thing unseen which couldn’t be accessed from the walls. There would be a small office for the medic on duty to keep important files which would need to be kept separate from the main files. The walls were thick enough to withstand a laser torch for several minutes; the door was blast-level thick. Everything was white and chrome, down to the regeneration pod covering the bed.

The room smelled like her, earthy and human and warm, and something metallic, something inhuman. Beyond the smell of hospital disinfectants – not the ferrous smell of blood, not the smell of metal tools.

He stopped dead as his eyes registered what he was actually seeing.

Her hair gave it away, its long strands hanging from the wires.

Part of his brain shut down as his body did, in fear and anguish and pain and longing. The other part analyzed.

Not chrome, as he’d originally thought. Darker. An iron gray. Not a regeneration pod; wires, tubes, armour-like pieces. He could see small parts of her skin; her eyes were closed. Some wires led out to Alliance-standard monitoring devices. She was alive; her heart was beating normally, though for some reason there were two cardiac monitors.

She was encased in this machinery.

He forced himself to inhale again, the breath long, and slow.

The analytic part of his brain identified the smell – the ozone-laden smell of a field of husks after a firefight. The sharp tang of his trip with Shepard through …

Through a Reaper.

The rest of his brain shut down.

Shepard had been indoctrinated.

Shepard had been… _converted_.

He felt his knees weaken, and he stumbled slightly. Aelianus caught his elbow, but Garrus barely noticed, his eyes locked on hers.

Everything came apart in his head.

They hadn’t wanted him to know.

They’d taken the long way.

She was under high security. She was secluded.

She was alive…

But that was all anyone who needed to know could know.

She’d shut down the Reapers and shut down with the Reapers. That was the only explanation.

She was only alive through some miracle …or she was brain dead.

And they’d probably only kept her alive long enough for him to return, to say goodbye …

Maybe they wanted to give her a state funeral – try to get the machinery out without wrecking her body too much, they’d never had the chance the first time …

He’d lost her again.

And yet again, he had not been there.

He wondered if they needed him to decide to end life support.

 _Spirits_ , _no…_

He heard a faint keening from far away. He’d heard the tone only once before: back on Palaven, when he was only a few years old, he’d stopped near his bedroom door, hearing his mother keening softly. He’d approached the door – Mother had just been very ill, and Father had taken her to the hospital, but Mother was never _sad_ – and stood there, watching as, incomprehensibly, his father held his mother and rocked her gently, his subvocals the warmest and most loving he’d ever heard them. His mother sounded like loss, anguish, guilt, pain, sadness, loneliness, denial, longing.

It took him far too long to realize that this keening was emanating from him.

He swayed on the spot, feeling the rush of emotions through his brain, the biochemical reactions in his overwhelmed brain flooding him with a deep ache, like all his bones had been bruised. Aelianus held him up firmly.

He felt his mouth moving, felt the distinct rumble of his vocal cords vibrating the air he pushed out involuntarily, his brain grasping at what little it could hold onto, the half-broken sounds of her name echoing over the desperate keening.

Aelianus gripped his arm sharply, but Garrus paid him no attention.

“Garrus.” He shook his head, dazed.

“Garrus, she’s _not going to die_. It’s going to be okay.” He just blinked.

 _You haven’t lost her_ , his father hummed softly. _You’re not going to lose her._ _It’s okay._

Some part of Garrus’ brain reminded him that it was awfully hard to lie in subvocals.

He blinked again, clearing the haze from his vision, feeling the rush of emotion pass, leaving him feeling weak and shaky.

He trilled gently, a quiet _I don’t know whether I can believe you_.

His father’s subvocals dropped into a low rumble, so caring it was almost a purr. _There is more news._

Garrus couldn’t parse the disconnect between the tone of his subvocal and the situation he was presented with. More news? More _good_ news?

He waited, chasing the doubts out as best he could.

Aelianus paused for a long time. Garrus looked over at him; he looked indecisive.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he finally said, not looking at his son.

Garrus looked back at Shepard.

 Aelianus took a deep breath, still holding his son’s arm. “Usually these conversations go the other way,” he started.

Garrus looked over at his father.

Aelianus looked at the woman encased in Reaper technology, then met his son’s gaze.

“Son … Garrus, you’re a father.”

The world dropped from under Garrus’ feet again. He blinked. He held onto one scrap of sanity.

“Dad, I … no, that’s impossible.”

His father quirked a brow plate and a mandible in a distinctly Vakarian smile.

“We were hoping you could shed some light on that.”

Garrus tore his gaze from his father and stared at Shepard again, blinking helplessly.

“She’s pregnant.” A trill of disbelief.

“Yes.” A light hum of amusement.

“I’m the father.” A purring cross between shock and something that made him feel like he was on top of the world.

“Yes.” A rumble of fatherly understanding.

“ _Spirits_.”


	24. Talking to a Wall

“No, no, you go on ahead. I think I’ll stay here tonight. I spoke to James about it: he says they can find me a cot.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen her in months … and now this … I need some time. I’ll be okay.”

“Alright, Garrus. Don’t think too hard.”

“Get some rest, Dad.”

“You too.”

The door slid shut behind the elder Vakarian, and the light pinged from green to red, signaling to Garrus that the door was now locked. The younger Vakarian fell into a chair near Shepard, sprawling back over it and staring at the ceiling.

He was exhausted, and hungry, and he was a father. He exhaled forcefully, closing his eyes, turning it over in his head. The doctor in charge of Shepard’s case – a charming woman not unlike Dr. Chakwas – had shown him the test results, and he had to agree they were pretty damn conclusive. She had no more idea than anyone else as to how the laws of biology had been bent to pull this one off, but she was taking care of Shepard and the child as best she could.

They’d made love the night before London. Or, well, sometime in the twenty-four to forty-eight hours before London; his timeline of those couple days was pretty sketchy. But he’d fairly dragged her up to bed in a bid to get her to grab some sleep before the planned assault (he’d needed some too), and Shepard had said something that had made him reach over and wrap his arms around her …

She usually cuddled him, not the other way around. She was all curves, soft and flexible, curling around his plates. He would hold her, but he didn’t really initiate the … cuddling. But this time, after she’d spoken, he had moved closer to her on the bed, wrapping an arm over her waist and slipping the other under her neck, drawing her in against him, bending his legs in and around hers.

What was it she had said?

Ah, right.

“I wish I knew if I were coming back.”

She’d sounded too casual when she’d said it, like it didn’t really matter to her, it would just be convenient to know – almost as if it would be a true courtesy on the universe’s part to let her know whether she’d be coming back alive, but, you know, no big deal.

But she’d been turned away from him when she’d said it, staring at the frame on her night stand holding her old dog tags. She’d been laying still, one arm up underneath her pillow, the other resting on her waist, her toes playing idly with the corner of the sheet.

It had hurt, to hear that sentence.

So he’d come to her, and he’d held her, and he’d stroked her hair in the way she liked it most, and he’d purred a soft subvocal of love – not tinged with reassurance … even though she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, he couldn’t lie to himself like that – but he let traces of sympathy and his own pain at not knowing whether they would live or die slip into his gentle rumbling.

She’d relaxed a bit, and they were silent for a while. Eventually she had turned toward him and slipped her own arms around him, kissing his cowl and mandible gently.

It had slowly developed into gentle, loving sex – the kind where nothing was hurried or hasty, nothing was desperate or needy. Rather they simply reaffirmed their love for one another, engaging in this most original act of intimacy, the knowledge that this – the togetherness, the unity, the presence of the other, the balance, the solitude – might never happen again lending a certainty and comfort to the act.

He had cradled her afterwards, and her fingertips had traced the patterns of his plates and ghosted over his markings, and they’d fallen asleep.

The last thing he remembered of that night was looking into her eyes.

When he came out of his memories he realized he was keening – it was barely noticeable, just a whisper in his subvocals; the equivalent of finding you have tears running down your face and you hadn’t realized you were crying.

He dropped his gaze from the ceiling, looking down at Shepard.

“Hi, Shepard.”

Silence.

“I missed you. I … missed you a lot.”

He sighed.

“I’m happy … we … we have a child. When we talked about this … I never thought … I don’t think you ever thought this would be possible, either.”

He stood, and stepped forward, beside her; he lifted his hand and held it over her abdomen, then over her head.

“They told me I shouldn’t touch you.”

His hand wavered.

“Oh, Shepard, even encased in Reaper machinery you’re gorgeous.”

He slumped back into the chair, head in his hands.

“Reapers, Shep, why? Why? Why did they come? I wish you were awake, I wish you could tell me what happened up there, what happened with Harbinger – why are they all dead? Why are you pregnant?”

He groaned.

“Spirits, even _after_ we win the war, life is complicated. We have to figure out what to do with the Reaper remains; we have to get all the relays running again; we have to rebuild the galactic community…”

He raised his head to stare at her through his talons.

“As much as I wish you were here to help us sort this out – how you manage to sort everything out is beyond me – of all the people who’ve earned a break you’re top of the list … I just wish you could be awake to enjoy it.”

He laughed softly.

“Who am I kidding. You wouldn’t take a break unless I strapped you into a shuttle and we took off for Intai’sei. You’d take it upon yourself to fix everything. And … well, we might be better off, but—maybe we need to figure things out for ourselves.”

He stood up again and passed his hand over her, as if caressing her cheek, her shoulder, her arm.

“I hope you wake up though, Shepard.”

His hand paused over her forehead, his eyes closing.

“I really, really miss you.”

His talon dipped, his gloves long forgotten on the decon table at the entrance to the room, and he stroked her exposed cheek.

* * *

 

_the world is warm_

_the world is blue_

_clouds, fog, mist_

_it is too wet_

_too humid_

_he is used to dry sunbaked plains_

_he hears the waves_

_crashing on the shores_

_breaking over his cowl_

_water flowing through his fringe_

_this is a good place._

* * *

He pulled his hand away with a gasp, returning to reality, his eyes refocusing on the room.

So _that_ was what happened when you touched her.

He sat down again and thought.

Surely someone would notice the fluctuation and come to investigate?

Minutes passed and no one came. He checked the readings, compared them to the notes on previous ‘incidents’.

There had been a surge, that was for sure. Her brain waves had gone off the charts. He’d had his eyes closed – he hadn’t noticed any change in the lighting. But according to the reports, usually the power surged when one of these things happened.

Maybe he’d just caught it on shift change? Maybe someone was asleep?

He debated. Go get someone? Make an extra note in the chart?

He looked back at her, the visible bits of skin relaxed and still. She looked almost peaceful, wrapped in the cocoon of wires and plates.

He almost felt _pulled_ to her, like there was some implacable force drawing him toward her. It wasn’t _physical_ , it was just – just _there._ Like she was calling…

He had a very disturbing thought just then, and backed away, a good couple metres from Shepard.

He ran through all the ground missions where he’d been in close contact with Reaper artifacts. He quickly lost count. Shepard had nearly always wanted him on her six – for protection from everything else as well as the knowledge that if she turned (she had confided in him once that every once in a while she could hear the voices, too), it was his job to take her down.

He’d had to assent through his teeth when she’d given him _that_ order. Luckily he’d never had to follow through.

But _now_ —

Maybe he’d been right? Maybe the Reaper in her body – he couldn’t think of _her_ as a Reaper – was weak … maybe it could only affect those who had already had exposure to indoctrination.

He ran through a list of contacts in his head. Who was nearby?

The answer came quickly. Anderson. He needed to talk to Anderson. 

He sent the message.

* * *

 

Garrus had fallen asleep in the chair beside Shepard when the door chimed several hours later. Shaking his head to clear the daze from his vision, he leapt to his feet upon seeing the dark-skinned man in the doorway.

“Admiral Anderson,” he rumbled. He cleared his throat and opened his mandibles wide. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Of course,” Anderson replied. “I don’t take urgent messages from Normandy crew lightly. You said you had a concern about Shepard?”

“Yes,” Garrus continued, turning to Shepard. “I… Admiral, how much contact would you say you’ve had with Reaper indoctrination methods?”

The admiral came to stand beside him. “I’m not sure I follow, Vakarian.”

Garrus turned it over in his head, trying to find the best way to describe it without coming across as absolutely off his rocker. “Did you ever feel like they were _pulling_ you? I only ever felt it a few times—talking to Sovereign on Ilos and the Citadel, when I was walking around the dormant Reaper with Shepard…” He shuddered. “There was also one time when I got swarmed by a pile of husks, and one of them shorted my helmet comm, and I could hear—well, I don’t know. But it felt like this _pull_ , like a magnetic attraction almost. I couldn’t have explained it to you any other way. It wasn’t like I _wanted_ to go to the Reapers … but I felt like if I didn’t keep other things on my mind, I’d just find myself… _going_.”

Anderson was quiet for a moment, staring at the Commander’s metallic shell.

Finally he made a soft sound under his breath, then spoke. “There was a moment, in Vancouver, just before the start of the war. I woke up that morning and I could tell something was off. Through that whole day, it felt like every place I went was the wrong place. I knew it wasn’t true, of course. I didn’t have very many options that day. But it spiked just before the Reapers hit, and I suspected it might have been some sort of lowgrade wide-range indoctrination wave. I deliberately paid it no mind.”

Garrus stayed silent.

Anderson closed his eyes, shook his head. “Then there was a moment in London. I was on foot, trying to follow Shepard to the beam, to the Crucible. I tripped, I hit my head – a sad way to go, honestly, but I’d already broken two limbs… maybe I just passed out—but as I was lying on the road, I heard that awful roar they make, that low growling roar, and it resonated through my head, and the only thing I wanted to do was get up and go to the nearest Reaper… it was a good thing my leg was broken and I couldn’t get up.”

Both men stayed silent for a moment.

Anderson swallowed. “I think what I’m trying to say is that I suspect I know the feeling you’re describing, Legate.”

“Spirits, Admiral, don’t call me that.”

The older man chuckled. “Feeling a bit uncomfortable with the prestige that comes with rank, son?”

Garrus grunted. “It’s a token title.”

Anderson chuckled again. “Not from the way the primarch talks about you. Now. Why bring up Reaper indoctrination?”

Garrus frowned. “Tell me if you can feel it now.”

The older man fell silent, and closed his eyes. Garrus could still feel it, a slight shadow of a tug in his gut…

Anderson opened his eyes. “I … I feel _some_ thing. It’s like there’s a tiny hook, or a magnet. It feels awfully familiar.”

“I know.”

Anderson bit his lip.

“What do we do?”

Garrus inhaled deeply. “Call in the experts, I’d presume.”


	25. Meetings, Pointless and Otherwise

Shepard had a vague sense of self. She felt _present_ … she hadn’t felt that way in a long time. For so long now, she felt, she’d been stretched thin – like parts of her had been spread out across many light-years, her essence drifting like so much cosmic dust.

She’d died in space.

She could remember the feeling, if she tried hard enough. The panic that had flooded her veins, forced her to take deeper breaths than she should have, the few seconds of dread as her lungs struggled for air and she saw lights at the corners of her eyes.

She wasn’t thinking about that now.

She felt safe, now. Cradled, almost, in the arms of the galaxy. But she felt _wider_ , more open, like she _understood_.

She was slowly beginning to realize who she was again. Her mind was beginning to parse the information it contained.

Shepard dreamed.

* * *

 

Dr. Fallujah stood, leaning on her right foot, one hand on her hip, the other holding a clipboard against her chest. She was watching Shepard’s brain-wave monitor, her eyes tracing the theta waves as they curved and spiked and bounced.

“Week twenty-two, Commander. Week twenty-two of forty-five, and we are no closer to getting you and the little one out of there. What on earth am I going to do?”

She shook her head.

A quiet Australian voice answered from behind her.

“I think I might be able to help.”

Emma only tilted her head slightly, not turning. “I don’t remember calling a nurse. And the code to this room is classified.”

The woman was smiling, she could tell. There was the slightest hint of pride in her voice. “I’m very good with doors, Miss Fallujah. And I’m also very, _very_ good with Shepard. My name is—”

“Miranda Lawson.”

“I see my reputation precedes me.”

Emma allowed herself to smile the tiniest bit. “I’ve done my research, Miss Lawson.”

“Well, then,” Miranda continued, stepping up beside the petite doctor, “I think we’ll agree that I might be an asset to your project, Doctor.”

Emma looked over at Miranda in her peripheral vision, not turning her head. “That depends on whether or not your boss gets wind of any of this.”

Miranda let out a soft laugh. “Oh, Doctor, if that’s what you’re worried about, you needn’t. I quit. Also, if my sources are correct, my former boss is almost certainly dead. And I tend to pick very good sources.”

The doctor was silent for a moment.

“Who knows you’re here?”

“Paperwork gets messy after a war, Doctor. Officially, I’m an intern from New South Wales. The only people who know that Miranda Lawson is alive and aboard the _Parigoria_ are Garrus Vakarian, David  Anderson, and yourself. For the purposes of our interaction, I’d suggest you call me Jennifer Smith. I’ll wipe the record of our conversation here.”

Emma closed her eyes and breathed in slowly. After she breathed out, she opened her eyes and turned to the woman on her left, looking up at her.

“What do you think of our patient, Miss Smith?”

* * *

 

Garrus stood just outside the door of Shepard’s room, leaning up against the wall, trying to remember how to breathe. He hadn’t had a lot of time to himself upon returning to civilized space – much of galactic command had tagged along for the Battle of Earth, because a very large portion of the amassed galactic fleets had been along for the ride, too. That being the case, there were a lot of (in his opinion, rather pointless) meetings going on, with everyone trying to figure out what was going to happen next.

It was chaos.

They’d found Wrex somewhere in Brazil, snacking on wildlife after having cleaned up a sizable number of Reaper troops on his own. He’d said he wasn’t worried about the state of Tuchanka: he trusted Bakara to keep everyone in line “even better than he would himself”.

Liara had quietly returned to the Normandy and was keeping track of a handful of agents in the Sol System. There weren’t many, and she had to be very careful, but they had useful intelligence. As the salarians had no presence in the Sol System apart from a few STG units, the covert agents within those units had been invaluable in determining what exactly the salarians _might_ be planning, both here and beyond the Local Cluster.

Tali had met up with the admirals in the system – Daro’Xen and Han’Gerrel were there, and luckily Shala’Raan was too. Tali had told him in private that the decision to leave the Civilian Fleet without the Patrol Fleet to protect them had been an agonizing one, though the Heavy Fleet had needed the protection more, and the geth had volunteered to help protect the Civilian Fleet … Garrus personally thought that it was a damn good thing that Raan had come along, if only to give Tali some backup against Xen and Gerrel. He was glad he had absolutely no reason to be in on _those_ particular meetings. Tali had told him they were currently arguing about whether to try to get back to Rannoch on their own, or whether to outfit some or all of their ships with Tali’s mass-relay-communication systems. Garrus thought the choice was obvious, but then he’d also underestimated how stubborn Han’Gerrel was.

Hackett was extremely busy trying to coordinate the repair and supply of all the Alliance ships in the system, and coordinating with the heads of the other fleets in order to get _them_ what they needed – not to mention being busy coordinating all the heads of the nation-states of the Earth who were flipping the fuck out over everything, being that their planet was a disaster. Garrus did _not_ envy the man his job.

And the Hierarchy? Garrus turned around and rested his forehead against the wall. Between his father, Sparatus, and Victus, they were the best-represented government in the galaxy at the moment. His father currently stood as both a Praetor and a Senator: he’d basically run the Cipritine government, having gone into political office after C-Sec, and held considerable sway in the Palavenian government as a result; when war had broken out, the powers-that-be had asked him to take over logistical control of the fleets, seeing as he, Garrus, had been coordinating supply lines, it had made sense … plus he was personal friends with the turian Councillor, which didn’t hurt, and on a first-name basis with the wartime Primarch. Garrus hadn’t been able to avoid those meetings, though after the first two he hadn’t minded. Between Aelianus, Sparatus, and Adrien, they’d actually managed to work out a lot of problems, and the Hierarchy ships in the system were running smoothly.

Garrus knew Tevos was in the system somewhere, and Valern apparently was too, but as he’d not gotten more than fifteen minutes to chat with Liara, he didn’t know more than that. Sparatus wasn’t being forthcoming: his subvocals had conveyed “not a priority”. Which was a bit odd, however Garrus turned it over. Why wouldn’t the current Council be a priority?

He shook his head. He’d have to ask Sparatus personally. Maybe he thought everyone needed to get their own species sorted first?

The Alliance seemed to making galactic order a priority, though, now that he thought about it. Anderson, he knew, had been tasked by Hackett with coming up with an Alliance-sponsored plan for the rebuilding of Council Space. Anderson would have been tearing his hair out, if he had any. Instead, he and Garrus had spent several nights with a few rounds of drinks and far more datapads than they would have liked, brainstorming potential power balance schemes. Would the Council be willing to take on more members? Garrus wasn’t sure; Anderson had just about fallen over laughing. What about a secondary Council? Garrus couldn’t see the point; Anderson had tried to work out how it would function and ended up finishing a bottle. Garrus liked those nights, actually: it gave him something to think about beyond “there isn’t enough food for much longer”, and he felt like he was actually being helpful.

Here, standing outside his mate’s hospital room, he felt anything but helpful.

At least he’d been able to track Miranda down. That had been a challenge. He’d sifted through millions of short-range data feeds, trying to identify her personal comm-code, which he figured she would have encrypted … it had taken days, and he’d found nothing.

Then he’d had the idea to try sending an announcer on Cerberus codes, and he’d encoded it with “Archangel”. A stupid idea, maybe, and it could have brought everything down on his head (who knows who it would have found), but – he needed Miranda.

She’d pinged his personal omnitool the next day.

She was in there now, under the guise of “Jennifer Smith”. She’d dyed and cut her hair – it was a light brown, and fell to just under her chin. She also had freckles.

She’d listened carefully to Garrus’ description of the ‘pull’, which they had thought might be Reaper-based, and she’d said she would look at it… carefully. She was currently studying the DNA of the turian child Shepard was carrying. She was studying the machinery encasing Shepard, trying to determine its purpose. _She_ was being _helpful_.

 _He_ was standing in a hallway, mulling over questions that were useless until the relays were working again, pondering supply chains that didn’t exist, considering potential forms of galactic government.

He sank down on his haunches, forehead still against the wall.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear Liara and Tali until they were right behind him.

“Miranda says you need a break,” Liara’s soft voice said, breaking him out of his reverie and nearly making him jump out of his skin before leaping to his feet.

“Well, _actually_ what she said was that she wanted you to stop hovering and moping in the hallway,” Tali chimed in, hands on hips.

Garrus’ mandibles opened and closed as he blinked at them.

“But … you two are both busy. With … important things.”

Tali snorted. “Bosh’tet. You’re our friend. You need a break. Frankly, so do we.”

Liara smiled. “Come for lunch with us, Garrus. Try not to think about the fate of the galaxy for an hour or two.”

Garrus chuckled softly. “Without Shepard around, _someone_ has to.”

Liara looked distant for a moment. “You know, Garrus, somehow I think she still is.”

They went to lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a year now since I started writing this massive fic, and I feel like I've barely gotten started. Thanks to all my lovely readers - I'm so glad you're enjoying this with me, and I hope you stick around. :)


	26. Bite Your Tongue

Time is in flux after a war. There are days when you could swear 24 hours felt more like a hundred – and there are days when you head to bed and you could swear you’d only just gotten up. Months feel like days; hours, years. It grinds on you.

Tali had been nursing a minor headache when she’d docked with the _Tonbay_. It was Raan’s turn to host the four in-system admirals for their regular meeting, and Tali had been grateful – only Raan and Han’Gerrel had their ships in-system, and she far preferred Auntie Raan’s ship to the _Neema_ , even though she’d briefly been part of the _Neema_ ’s crew after her Pilgrimage.

The meeting had started fairly calmly. Xen, Raan, and Tali had finally gotten through to Han’Gerrel at the last meeting that his idea of leaving the system and attempting to make it all the way back to Rannoch was simple insanity, and so they had decided to adjourn, let Han stew for a day or two, and return to talk about how to implement Tali’s mass-relay activation system fleet-wide.

At least, that’s what Tali _thought_ was the plan.

As soon as the meeting had started, Xen had opined that perhaps it would be best to keep the technology a state secret. Han had agreed with her, reasoning that it would be a bartering tool – useful, in a post-war environment. Raan had stated that she saw the value in having the technology as a bartering ship, but that it was only a matter of time before someone else figured it out – at which point, public opinion would be against the quarians as they’d held back the technology in the first place.

Tali was having a hard time biting her tongue. The headache had blossomed into a full-on migraine and she was wondering if she hadn’t inadvertently picked up an infection. She missed the geth in her suit who would tell her if something was wrong. It was odd – she’d gotten used to them so quickly.

She wanted to tell Xen and Han that they were being isolationist to the extreme, and to their own detriment. She knew Raan was right, though she also knew that it wasn’t likely anyone would develop the technology any time soon – she herself had benefited from a conflux of lucky breaks in creating the system: the stroke of luck in having the data from the Charon relay activation, the practice with the two relays it had taken them to get to Earth, the highly-advanced technology available to her on the Normandy … Besides, Hannah Shepard already knew how the system worked, and the Normandy was already outfitted. The system was already _not_ a secret, even if only she and possibly Hannah could build it.

More than anything else, she didn’t see the point in arguing over _who_ was reactivating the relays when _everyone_ needed to get home. She just wanted to help. She finally felt like she could do some good – not just for the Fleet, but for the entire galaxy.

She half-smiled inside her helmet, remembering Shepard shouting down the admirals way back when.

Han’Gerrel slapped his hand down on the table and Xen shouted back at him, breaking her train of thought and making her head throb. She sighed, lifted her hands from the table and stood up straight.

Raan was watching her. Xen turned to look as she moved. Han’Gerrel was still going on about proprietary rights. Tali raised a hand halfway into the air.

“Can I just say something?”

Han stopped and turned. “Of course, Tali’Zorah.”

Xen leaned back on a hip and crossed her arms. “You’ve been awfully quiet today.”

“Yeah.” She shook her head a bit. “Sorry. Headache. I just—oh, keelah. How do I say this? I’m …” She took a deep breath, and opened her omnitool, calling up a list of numbers in columns and projecting it to the center of the table. “Look at these. These are current troop and civilian numbers for every species currently in the Sol system, in the first couple columns here.” She pointed. “This third column? Current supplies, per person.”

Xen and Han watched the numbers scrolling. Tali felt like Raan was still watching her. She kept going.

“It’s worth noting that no one is entirely dependent on supplies – not quite, anyway. We have one liveship in the system, the _Ren’tor._ It is currently projecting that it has enough supplies to continue growing food for the quarians in the Sol system for six months. Arable land remains on Terra and on Luna, but much of it has been damaged in the war, and production is limited by the seasonal climate. It is also worth noting that while the turian population in the system is very well-organized and almost entirely military – and therefore excellent at living off small rations – we are the only source of dextro-protein-based food supplies in the system. The Hierarchy has put in a request to help fund the _Ren’tor_ ’s production in exchange for a cut of the food; this would reduce our supplies to five months but also up the turians’ to five, where they are sitting at three. Levo supplies are currently clocked at six to seven months, between all the species in the system, unless production on Terra and Luna is stepped up – and that depends on how many workers they can get, and how much land they can clear.”

Raan spoke up; Xen and Gerrel were silent. “Where did you get these numbers, Tali? These are very precise, and… very classified.”

Tali would have rubbed her fingers against her temples if she could. “A … friend. A good friend. The numbers are accurate. My personal opinion, which is shared by my source, is that the estimates of how long the food will last are … generous. Possibly by a month or more.”

“Why do you tell us this?” Gerrel said, quietly. Maybe it was the headache, but she felt like she heard shame in his voice. He was a stubborn bosh’tet, but he did have a heart.

“Because I don’t think we have the time to waste talking about how to keep the benefit of the mass-relay activation system to ourselves. Everyone needs to get home, Admiral Gerrel. We can’t all stay here for much longer. It’s been nearly six months. We need to stop arguing and go back to Rannoch.”

There was silence in the small meeting room for a good minute and a half.

Xen pulled up her omnitool and the extra light startled Tali briefly. “Tali’Zorah – what would you need to outfit … say, a ship of every race’s fleet with the mass-relay activation technology? Surely each fleet will have at least one ship capable of handling the power draw.”

Tali leaned forward on the table again, hanging her head, thinking through the ache in her head. “I … it would be easier to tell you that if I knew what we were working with. Can you find out how many ships in the system are outfitted with cyclonic barrier technology?”

“Yes, that should not be hard. I will send you the information as soon as I have it. At that point – Han, Shala, it would be good of you both to narrow down the list of options from your respective fleets for me, if you wouldn’t mind, while I go and harass the other races’ heads of fleets.” Tali smiled, imagining that particular conversation between Xen and Hackett, or Xen and Primarch Victus…

“Of course. I’ll have a list for you by nightfall. We’d want something easily manoeuvrable, yes?” Han asked, looking to Tali, who nodded. “I should think Raan would have the best option, or even yourself, Daro.”

Raan spoke up. “I can’t remember off-hand how many of my remaining ships are equipped with cyclonic barrier shielding, but I’m not sure any of Daro’Xen’s ships would have the electrical system to handle the changes in the shielding array.”

“Ah, you have a point, Shala.”

Xen nodded. “I’ll have your lists by the evening meal, Han, Shala?” Nods from the other admirals. “I’ll have _your_ list by tomorrow midday, Tali’Zorah.”

“Thank you, Admirals. I’ll get to work on an acquisitions list and an installation plan right away. Meeting adjourned?”

“Meeting adjourned,” echoed Han.

“Keelah se’lai,” all four said in unison. Han’Gerrel and Daro’Xen left immediately. Shala’Raan came over to Tali and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Well done, Tali,” she said.

“I’m not sure what I did, Auntie Raan. It’s never that easy to get Han’Gerrel to stop arguing, and the day Daro’Xen agrees with me … well I never thought I’d see it.”

“I know how you feel. Sometimes sitting on the Admiralty Board feels like an exercise in futility. But sometimes … sometimes you get through, on the important things. If you don’t mind my saying, Tali’Zorah, I felt like you were channeling a little bit of your old commander there, when you told us we needed to stop arguing.” Raan was smiling, Tali could tell.

“Yeah,” she said in reply, “I kind of feel like I was, too.”

* * *

 

“Garrus?”

Garrus looked up across the small quarters he was sharing with his father, lowering the datapad he’d been perusing – Tali’s notes on the outfitting of the turian frigate _Cultrum_ with the new mass-relay activation technology. He’d been so deep into reading that he had barely noticed his father’s question.

“Yes, Dad?”

“Do you have a minute?” Garrus was surprised to hear a tone of reprimand. He couldn’t for the life of him understand what he might have done wrong. He cast back over the past few days of meetings – nothing was coming to mind, no slights to anyone, no mistimed yawns … he’d gotten pretty good at the whole military diplomat thing.

So what was it?

“Of course.” He set the datapad down on the small coffee table.

“Would you mind if we talked?” Subvocals calmer. Perhaps Aelianus had attempted one or two times to get Garrus’ attention and that was why he’d heard reprimand in his father’s tone? 

“No, not at all.” Garrus leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What do you want to talk about?”

Aelianus paused. Garrus’s cop instincts flared. Whatever Aelianus was about to say, he wasn’t going to like it.

“I’d like to talk about your involvement with Commander Shepard.”

Oh.

Well, fuck.

Garrus’ concerns about telling his father about his relationship with Shepard came flooding back. She was human. She was a Spectre. He’d fought in the Relay 314 Incident. He had to deal with Spectres being asses all the time at C-Sec. He was going to think that Garrus was a xenophile, a pervert, fraternizing with the enemy, it was bad enough he’d _worked_ with a Spectre, but _mating with one_ — ohhh boy …

Garrus carefully schooled his face and his subvocals into the calmest state he could possibly get them. This was a matter-of-fact debriefing. Just info. Catching up. Nothing to worry about. “Okay. What would you like to know?”

His father, across the room, was nigh unreadable. Garrus inwardly cursed. His father had been a top C-Sec investigator. Whatever he wanted to know, Garrus was sure that he’d end up spilling it all out.

“When did you and the Commander become involved with each other?”

Okay, that wasn’t _too_ bad. “We became friends on the SR-1, and initiated a relationship during my time on the SR-2 while Shepard was investigating the Collector threat.” Subvocals: carefully matter-of-fact. This wasn’t classified information yet.

“May I ask what the purpose of the relationship was at that time?”

Another easy question. Thank the spirits. Aelianus had done military service just like every other turian: he had the same attitude toward sex on risky missions that any other turian did. … Except there weren’t usually humans—human _Spectres_ —involved…

“Stress relief,” Garrus shrugged. “High-risk mission. We were good friends, soldiers—it made sense.”

His father looked like he was thinking. He was completely silent. His subvocals had been _very_ calm. Silence was a tactic. Silence was what you did when you wanted the other person to think…and to squirm.

Garrus was trying very hard to hide the squirming, but the longer his father kept it up, the more worried he got. Which would it be first? The fact that she was a human? Or that she was a Spectre?

He was marshaling an argument – _Look, Dad, she’s a great partner and an amazing person, you’ve got to look past the Spectre thing –_ when Aelianus spoke.

“When were you planning on making this formal?”

It took a supreme effort of will not to let his jaw drop.

“I … we … we were kind of in the middle of a war, Dad, we didn’t think…”

Aelianus turned the full brunt of his hawk-like gaze on his son, and Garrus felt himself shrivel slightly inside.

“Clearly you lacked a _considerable_ amount of foresight, Garrus.”

What the fuck.

“Might I remind you that your mate is _pregnant_? And still not formally part of our clan – or even formally your bondmate? You hadn’t even informed me that you were pursuing a serious relationship!” Aelianus rubbed at his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, shaking his head.

 _This_ was what he was mad about? Of all things? _This_?

“Garrus, you _know_ the standing of our clan, you _know_ your own standing within it – surely you could have seen that even the most formal and quickest of letters to me would have made it easier later on.”

Garrus could feel his shoulders rising up around his neck in embarrassment and anger. “Dad, I … well … it wasn’t really on our radar, I didn’t really think it would—”

“You didn’t think it would _last_? Is _that_ what you were going to say?” Aelianus threw his hands up in the air, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Spirits above, Garrus, it would take a blind _fool_ not to see—”

Garrus surged to his feet, fury coursing through him. “ _I didn’t think it would matter_ , _Father!_ ” He spat the word out at Aelianus like a rifle shot. “I didn’t thinktherewas _any way_ I could put this to you so that I could invite her to join our clan!” He stepped out from behind the coffee table, and forward into the center of the room. “Forgive me for assuming that my _xenophobic, Spectre-hating father_ might _possibly have an issue_ with the _eldest son_ _of the Vakarian clan_ marrying _the first human Spectre_!”

Aelianus had taken a step back. His eyes were slightly wider than they usually were, and his mandibles had fallen semi-slack. “Garrus, I—I didn’t realize—”

Garrus took another step forward. “Bull _shit!_ You’ve always tried to set me up with high-ranking women in other high-ranking clans, women who might cure me of my _irresponsible ways_ and make a _real turian_ out of me, isn’t that right, _Father?_ Why in the name of every damn spirit in the universe would I ever want to come forward to you with the fact that I was madly in love with the one woman you’d never _ever_ want me to marry because of the _shame_ it would bring down on us?” His voice broke. He could feel his subvocals growing so strong they nearly choked him. He swallowed. He took a deep breath. He went on.

“I don’t know about you, but I certainly remember the admonishments when I’d come home with comic books about the Relay 314 Incident – ‘Garrus, you must understand, these humans aren’t to be trusted’ – and oh, who could forget the speech I got when I received the invitation to Spectre training? ‘Garrus, son, it is the duty of every turian to follow the laws which govern our galactic society – it is _below you_ to join such an _irresponsible_ , _trouble-seeking_ institution.’ Oh, oh, and what about when I started work at C-Sec and my supervising partner ended up being a human? That was a good one! ‘Garrus, you’ll have to be very clear with your instructions to your subordinate – they’ve only evolved _one frequency_ of communication!’ And the _look on your face_ when I told you _he_ was _my_ superior!”

His subvocals were raw and cracking constantly, his hands shaking in rage.

“So _no_ , Father, I _didn’t_ tell you, because I thought I was going to _die_ before I would be able to convince you that I could ever marry a _human Spectre!_ And _children?_ Can you even _imagine_ how many nights Shepard spent sobbing in my arms because _she couldn’t give me children?!_ Can you _fathom_ how much it broke my heart to know that _I_ couldn’t give _her_ children, _either?_ Father, _please_ try to understand that not everything in the universe revolves around _merit_ and _rank!_ We were _friends_ —we were _together_ —we had _each other_ , in these final moments before everything was going to _end_ —I went to Omega to _die_ because _she had died_ and I’d realized _too damn late_ that I _loved_ her! I left my post on Menae to follow her before the entirety of galactic civilization crumbled because _if we were all going to die then I wanted to die in her arms_.”

He felt his chest cave in slightly, felt his heart thudding violently, felt his rage ebbing away, felt the deep ache returning.

“And _now_ …now, I come back, and she’s _alive_ , and she’s wrapped in a _Reaper cage,_ and she’s carrying our _child_ …and no one has any idea if either of them will _live_ , if the doctors will be able to get them _out_ …and you ask me why I didn’t _tell_ you? Why I hadn’t sent you a _letter_? You tell me it isn’t _proper_? She just _saved the fucking galaxy_ and _no one knows how_ and we might _never know_ —she’s somehow _magically_ _pregnant_ —and you want me to tell you why I didn’t bother asking for the _formalities_ of _bondship_? Dad, I—fuck, I’ve never _not loved you_ —but sometimes, sometimes Dad, you pick the _worst_ battles, and you—you make it _really fucking hard_.”

Garrus felt the flood of words trickle to a halt, and inhaled shakily, meeting his father’s eyes. He felt bereft, empty, like the slightest breeze would topple him. There would be a rebuttal. There always was. And he’d have to marshal his strength again, because he’d just shouted his father down, and that never ended well…

The silence blared loudly in the tiny quarters as the two turians watched each other breathe.

Aelianus swallowed, sighed softly, and spoke gently.

“Garrus… forgive me. I have hurt you, deeply, both now and in the past. This is my mistake. I own it and I apologize for it. I have spent many a night in the past few months rethinking my old prejudices, and it… is my intent to look past my previous thinking, and try to rebuild and move forward. I would like to build a strong relationship with you and your chosen bondmate, no matter who she may be. As a fellow turian, I owe you respect, and I have neglected that. As your father, I owe it to you to be an upstanding role model… and I believe I misunderstood that role.”

Garrus reflected briefly on how everything in his life seemed to be constantly turning itself upside down, and he wished it might stop for a bit so he could get his bearings.


	27. Early One Morning

Shepard woke with a scream fit to rouse the dead.

It startled Ann, the nurse checking her vitals, so badly that she clutched at her chest, her heart racing frantically as she stared, shocked and disbelieving, at the not-long-previously-comatose woman’s wide-open eyes.

Most of Shepard’s face was covered in metal – the same plates, tubes and wires that covered most of her. Her eyes were the only part of her face that was clearly visible. They had presumed that Shepard’s mouth would be tightly closed and unable to open … apparently not.

Then the nurse realized the scream was coming from the hospital-wide intercom system … and her personal comm. The lights started flickering, and the displays went haywire. Shepard’s brain waves shot into chaos before the screen sparked and went out. The scream just kept going, and going, and Ann could see the lights in the hallway beyond the locked door flickering, too.

She panicked. This was the sort of thing she’d heard about – the strange things that happened around Commander Shepard, even before the end of the war … the rumours had been too strange to believe. Ann desperately keyed in the passcode and bolted from the room, sprinting down the hall, calling for Doctor Fallujah, painfully aware that she couldn’t be heard over the sound of Shepard’s shrieking echoing across the walls.

She turned the corner and barely got to the next one before running straight into the Australian intern, who was only steps ahead of Emma Fallujah. The Australian – Smith, was it? – put her hands on Ann’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eye, putting her face quite close to Ann’s so she could be heard as she spoke.

“What happened? Tell me _exactly_ what happened.”

Ann stuttered, realizing she was shaking in fear. Her datapad clattered, unnoticed, to the floor as her hands went limp. “I – I’m sorry, Jen, I – Emma – she just started – oh _God_ , she just started _screaming_ , I wasn’t even _touching_ her – I was just checking her vitals, recording numbers, and then –”

Jennifer threw a look over her shoulder at Emma, who only nodded and sprinted off down the hall towards Shepard’s room.

“Ann. It’s Ann, right?” Jennifer looked calm and composed. Ann nodded mutely. “Ann. You’ve done nothing wrong. Everything’s going to be okay.” Jennifer bent slightly and picked the fallen datapad up off the floor. “I’m going to take the patient’s notes and Doctor Fallujah and I will see to this. I need you to go to the communications centre and tell Jaime Rajwander to send the priority Alpha One messages. Do you understand?”

Ann nodded.

“Tell me you understand.” Jennifer’s eyes were searching hers. _She thinks I’m in shock_ , Ann realized. _She’s not far off. But you don’t get to be a nurse on the_ Parigoria _by going into shock when a patient goes postal._

“I understand.” Ann nodded firmly. “Jaime Rajwander, priority Alpha One messages.”

“Good woman.” Jennifer smiled. “After that, Ann, make yourself a cup of tea, and take five. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Ann managed a smile back. “Will you be able to shut the screaming off the comms?”

Jennifer almost laughed. “I damn well hope so, Ann. Now go, those messages are urgent.”

Ann ran down the hall towards Comms as Jennifer sprinted off to follow Doctor Fallujah.

* * *

 

Miranda slammed her hand on the panel behind her as she entered the room, locking it securely and ducking into the decon shower, stripping and slipping into a surgery gown, yelling at the scream emanating from everywhere at once. “Damn it, Shepard, couldn’t you have waited _five_ minutes? I was enjoying a _perfectly_ good hummus wrap.”

The screaming gave no answer, but Miranda saw Emma Fallujah shake with a chuckle as she lined up her operating tools – scalpels, pliers, wire-cutters, blowtorches.

Miranda came out and swept her hair into a tight bun, sealing a hairnet over it before sliding on a pair of latex gloves and activating the thinnest layer of biotic barrier over her entire body. She extended one to Emma as well. It would _not_ do to have _any_ contamination at this particular stage of the game.

She stepped up to the doctor, but Emma waved her away, still decontaminating her tools. Miranda nodded and went to the main console, patching her omnitool in and seeing what she could do to hack the comm system from here. Her ears were starting to ache from the constant shriek, and while she knew it wasn’t going to stop any time soon, she could at least shut it out of her own comm system, and hopefully out of the mainframe as well.

She read through the code, her eyes flicking side to side. She stopped short, blinked, frowned, and filed that particular bit of information away for later before typing in a very specific counter-code which she’d gotten from a very specific project lead before sending him to a very specific Cerberus retirement facility. She held her breath as she waited for it to work through the system. After about ten seconds, the shrieking over the intercom stopped, and the transceiver in her ear fell silent, too. Another five and the displays stopped sparking; ten more and the lights calmed down, too.

Miranda felt a rock settle in her gut, and she bit her lip. Then she shook her head slightly, as if twitching away a fly, and put the train of thought from her mind. Now was not the time to puzzle out the mysteries of the universe.

She came over to Emma’s side, and looked at Shepard, whose eyes were open, but glazed over. Miranda leaned over the pod of technology and looked Shepard in the eye.

“No response,” Emma said. “I already tried that.”

Miranda nodded. “So I see.” She glanced up at the vitals monitors, now humming along with only the occasional twitch of extra electricity. “Her heart rate is high.”

“That’s to be expected,” Emma replied. “Woman’s in a lot of pain. Brain waves have normalized since the display came back on, which is good. This is already going to be more complicated than I’d like.”

The tall Australian woman chuckled softly. “Childbearing’s always complicated, Doctor.”

Emma threw her a dark glance. “I was hoping we’d get to deal with this one with less Reaper technology involved.”

“We knew this was how it was going to be a month ago,” Miranda said mildly.

“Still.”

A faint moan surprised both of them, turning both pairs of eyes toward the woman in front of them. Shepard’s eyes had focused, and she was staring at Miranda, who was still half leaned over her.

“Shepard,” Miranda said, smiling as kindly as she could, “Nice of you to join us.”

* * *

 

Shepard _hurt_. She could feel waves of pain rolling through her body, each harder than the last, coming at her faster and faster.

She couldn’t pin down when she’d become aware of her physical body – but she’d realized at some point that she was no longer floating, and indeed, couldn’t move. She couldn’t see, either, and she didn’t feel unsafe, but it felt claustrophobic.

She had slowly started to think, too, or at least to be conscious of her thoughts. She felt an odd absence in her mind, but also an unfamiliar presence on the edge of her consciousness.

She couldn’t hear much, to add to the list of things she couldn’t do. It felt like something was blocking her ears, and she heard a shrill ringing more often than not. It had been that familiar ring that had convinced her she was alive more than anything else: the damn tinnitus had plagued her since a stray grenade at Akuze (hardly the worst trauma to come out of Akuze, but an annoyance nonetheless), and if you had to deal with tinnitus in the afterlife, she was going to have a few words with Thane.

The pain had started not long thereafter. It came slowly at first, reminiscent of a nasty stomachache. It had intensified until Shepard was _damn_ sure she was alive, and very confused as to the nature of her injuries.

Eventually she’d given up holding the shrieks of pain in and had let out a full-on scream, or tried to, anyway, and she’d quickly realized something was covering her mouth. Then Miranda had shown up, swimming out of the haze above her, and it felt like horrible déjà vu, and she prayed to whatever gods might be up there that she’d fall asleep again and wake up with less pain, and maybe Miranda would be shouting at her to grab a pistol and some armour, and fuck, wouldn’t it be nice if she could do the last year or so over again? A second chance at a second chance? It would have been amusing if she hadn’t been in so much agony: like those games she used to play with the other spacer kids … if you died, you just started over, and if you got to the end of the game you could always play it again …

Another wave of pain washed over her, and she hazed out.

* * *

 

“Shepard? _Shepard!_ ” Miranda waved a hand over Shepard’s half-closed eyes, snapped her fingers.

“ _What on earth_ —” The doctor’s voice brought Miranda’s head round. Emma was holding a pair of wire-cutters and a small blowtorch, standing near Shepard’s mid-section, about to cut. She and Miranda had determined weeks ago that, should no conclusive course of action be reached by the time Shepard went into labour, they would perform what essentially amounted to a Caesarean section. It would more than likely harm Shepard, though they hoped they could save her – but when they’d put it to Vakarian …

Miranda had heard the thickness in his voice when he’d told them to save the child.

Hackett had agreed; so had Anderson. If it came down to it … let Shepard rest.

Shepard apparently had no intention of resting, however, if the doctor’s exclamation indicated anything. Miranda thought she ought not to have been surprised.

Emma was staring at the mass of wires and tubes and plates that surrounded Shepard’s mid-section and hips: the ‘pod’ had always been thickest there. It took Miranda a split second to realize what had startled Emma – the tubes and wires were _moving_ , squirming of their own accord. Emma took a step back abruptly, looking down at her feet, and Miranda followed her gaze to see the wires and tubes falling to the floor, slowly uncoiling from Shepard’s body to reveal the atrophied flesh beneath. She registered in her peripheral vision that a large amount of the technology encasing the rest of Shepard was starting to unwind and fall, as well, with several plates of metal clanging to the floor as the more delicate machinery behind them fell away, no longer needing protection.

Miranda swallowed a small shudder and stepped closer. Shepard’s belly was swollen with the child, but there were still wires running under her skin, and tubes attached to her. There were some areas of her body which looked disturbingly husk-like, but Miranda was surprised to see that underneath the covering of metal, more of Shepard seemed to be human than she would have thought. Of course, that was solely based on a surface view, but Miranda suspected there would be little reason to have skin covering Reaper machinery unless entirely necessary.

Both women stepped back. Shepard was all but nude on the table, a couple of stray plates lying on top of her where they’d fallen as the wires holding them had disconnected. There were spots of blood all over her shrunken body, an oddly-human counterpoint to the remaining dark metal pieces still joined with her flesh and the handful of light silvery metal pieces which Miranda knew _far_ too intimately to be comfortable with seeing again.

The woman on the table twitched, more metal falling away with clangs and shivers. She groaned, and her head shifted to the side, the plate over her mouth tumbling away. Her eyes were clear again, and Miranda could see her muscles straining to move after so many months of being idle.

Shepard caught Miranda’s eye, and Miranda stepped close, putting a hand on Shepard’s shoulder, glimpsing the same motherly feeling she’d felt in glimpses in the final stages of the Lazarus Project.

“What do you need, Shepard?”

The doctor glanced at the screen to the left of the table, which showed the frequency of her contractions, Emma having started recording them as soon as she’d gotten in. Emma was no gynecologist, but she’d had a daughter what felt like only yesterday, and the numbers on the screen made her breath hitch in sympathy – and _she_ hadn’t been in a coma for months before having Chloe.

Shepard’s voice rasped through the quiet, bringing Emma’s attention back to the immediate present.

“…Randa…” The sound was harsh and dry. Emma made a mental note to get some more hydration in her, stat. Clearly the IV they’d managed to sneak in amongst the wires hadn’t been enough.

Miranda nodded, leaning close so Shepard didn’t feel she had to be loud. “Yes, Shepard. I’m here.”

Shepard hacked out a cough. Emma went directly to one of the cabinets to get a saline drip. Miranda leaned closer as Shepard’s lips moved soundlessly.

Shepard tried again, forcing the sounds out between her chapped lips. “… _Garrus_ …”

Miranda smiled. “He’s on his way.” She could see the relief in Shepard’s face plain as day, and the weak woman’s eyes drifted shut.

Her peace didn’t last long. The leftmost monitor beeped, signaling the beginning of another contraction, and Shepard tensed, scrunched her face up as much as she could, and cried out brokenly as the new pain washed over her.


	28. Knock Knock

Liara put her omnitool on silent mode before sending Miranda her ping. _We’re here,_ it said, _and G’s about ready to tear down a wall. Can I let him in?_

She glanced over at the tall, wiry turian who, while not clawing at the walls yet, was certainly pacing fit to wear a hole through the floor.

Miranda’s reply was curt, though Liara expected it was out of haste rather than annoyance. _No. She’s fine. Calm him down first._

Liara lowered her omnitool and bit her lip, choosing her words carefully. “Garrus,” she began, turning towards him.

He stopped on a dime and whirled. “What is it – is she okay? Is she not okay? This wasn’t supposed to happen for weeks yet. Tell me what’s going _on,_ Liara.”

The asari resisted the urge to raise her eyebrows, and took a deep breath, instead. “Miranda says that Shepard is fine. She’s a little busy to tell me anything more. But she says they need calm in there, and … “ She looked pointedly at him.

Garrus sighed and tried to assemble himself into some modicum of calm – arms at his sides, mandibles semi-loose, pacing halted.

Liara smiled. “I’m sure that will do. Now don’t bite Miranda’s head off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Liara keyed in the code and the door opened just as Shepard let out a shriek. Garrus’ hands flew together and started twisting in worry, his mandibles clamped tightly against his face, and his entire body went as tense as a Council meeting as he hovered on the threshold.

“Go _on,_ Garrus,” Liara said, “Miranda said she’s fine.” She nudged him in, and he stumbled forward into the room, the door closing behind him.

Liara shook her head and headed back down the hallway to the waiting room, already calling up the latest batch of reports from her agents. No point in standing around worrying – Garrus _definitely_ had that one under control.

* * *

 

Dr. Fallujah was scurrying around, checking charts and jotting down numbers, recording every moment of this once-in-a-lifetime event. Miranda was massaging Shepard’s shoulders, trading meaningful glances with the doctor every minute or so. Garrus was fairly hovering beside the bed, having carefully nudged aside bits of Reaper in order to hold Shepard’s hand.

Shepard was trying to have a conversation with him. She kept interrupting herself.

“Garrus, please, I – _aaaaaaaah shit –_ don’t know what the _fuck_ is – oh _God_ – going _on!!_ ”

The tall, nervously-shifting turian was doing his best to keep his voice level and calm. “Well, you’re in labour—”

“I figured _that one_ out you _idiot,_ but _how the fuck—aaaaah what the almighty hell –_ ”

Miranda spoke, still rubbing Shepard’s shoulders. “That was a contraction.”

_“No fucking shit—”_

Garrus grasped her hand. “It’s gonna be okay, Shep, it’ll be okay.”

_“Don’t you fucking tell me it’s gonna be okay you bastard turian—”_ She broke off in a gasp, eyes going wide and her hand clenching his. _“Ow ow ow ow!”_

He looked at Miranda pleadingly. Miranda looked over at Fallujah.

Emma Fallujah checked the numbers, took a look around the other end of the table, and then spoke. “I suspect you’ll be crowning relatively soon, and then it’s just a matter of time. Judging by how long this has taken, I’d say we’re in for another couple hours. Fairly fast, for a first child. Though the Commander is well-known for doing things efficiently – I suppose childbirth is no different.”

Shepard just moaned, then slumped back onto the table as the worst of the contraction subsided. A few tears glistened in her eyes. “Oh _fuck,_ Garrus, it hurts worse than a damn _gutshot_.”

He winced and brushed some hair out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Shepard.”

She closed her eyes and tried to relax. “No. We said we wanted kids. I just – _ohhhhhh_ – didn’t think I’d be delivering any … ” Her muscles went taut again and she shook. “ _Miranda,_ for the love of all things good and wonderful in the universe, why can’t I have any fucking _drugs?!_ ”

“Because,” the Australian replied tartly, “they’ll metabolize too fast. They won’t do you any good. I had to reformulate your damn medi-gel on the Normandy just so Chakwas could patch you up after missions. Unfortunately I lost that particular schematic and I’ve been a bit _busy._ ”

Shepard not-so-subtly mumbled a blue streak. Miranda tried not to smile. A minute passed, then another, and then another contraction made itself felt, closely followed by another.

“So … ” Shepard finally said, roughly twenty minutes later, “ … how did it get there? I mean, it’s  …  not as if we could  …  you know  …  this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Miranda and Garrus shared a look. Shepard was, Miranda thought, probably keeping her eyes closed deliberately. Miranda nodded at Garrus.

Garrus swallowed very hard. “Well, I  …  you  …  we …  um. London.”

Shepard cracked a half-smile. “The last heat sink before the battle.”

“Oh Spirits. Yes. That.” Garrus looked like he wanted to hide in a hole. “That happened.”

“Yes, I remember. But …  Garrus, that’s not a thing that can happen. That doesn’t _work._ We _talked_ about this. _Oh fucking hell here comes another one—”_ She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood, and Garrus pulled a glove off and pressed it to her lips. She bit down on it instead, and Garrus made a mental note that he’d need new gloves by the end of the day.

When the contraction had subsided, Shepard let the glove fall from her mouth, panting. “Garrus. I—tell me. What happened. Whose is this. What don’t I know. What _year_ is it. Did I die again? Where am I? …  I guess asking if we won is a bit moot … ”

Garrus had to smile. “That’s a lot of questions, Shepard.”

“Humour me.”

“Right. Well. Let’s go with some of the most pertinent ones first. As far as we know, you didn’t die. It’s, ah—” he checked his omnitool—“September twentieth, twenty-one-eighty-seven, standard Earth calendar. You’re on the _Parigoria._ There’s a lot you don’t know. There’s a lot _I_ don’t know. Hell, there’s a lot that _no one_ knows.”

She breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, processing the information. In the middle of her thoughts, another contraction rolled in, and it was another several minutes before she was able to speak coherently again.

“ _Garrus—_ ow  … ” She clenched her eyes shut, willing her body to relax as much as she could. Miranda had left her shoulders and was helping Doctor Fallujah with final preparations – Shepard was progressing fast. “Garrus – you didn’t answer the important questions.” She opened her eyes and mustered a glare. “Whose is this. _What don’t I know._ ”

Miranda interrupted before Garrus could open his mouth again. “Shepard, you’re minutes away from crowning. You’re at ten centimetres and still dilating, believe it or not. That skin weave is better than I thought it was.”

Shepard looked over at Miranda. “All these words, Randa, they go straight over my head and keep on flying.”

“What I mean, Shepard, is that if you thought _this_ was bad, it’s about to get a lot worse, so I’d suggest you hang on tight and breathe deep, because—”

_“Holy fucking shit on a—”_

“Yes. That.”

Minutes passed, rolling into the dozens. Shepard’s curses slowly graduated into a mostly-incoherent string of moans and shrieks with the occasional swear thrown in for good measure – Miranda absently thought that Jack would be proud – and any slight colour that you could detect in Garrus’ gray plates had long since faded. Emma and Miranda worked nonstop, carefully helping the child (and Shepard) along its exodus into the greater galaxy.

Finally, Shepard fell back onto the table with an exhausted moan, her skin and hair drenched in sweat. A small, squawking cry came from the other end of the table, and Shepard’s eyes shot open as Garrus fairly leapt to his feet.

“That sounds like a—”

Miranda held out the squalling, squirming infant turian out to Garrus, who took it almost reverently and cradled it against his chest. Shepard stared, lips parted in shock, and she attempted to push herself up to her elbows. Doctor Fallujah slipped an arm under her shoulders and helped her up as Garrus passed the child to Shepard’s trembling arms.

Shepard’s voice was hoarse from exertion and thick with emotion, tears welling in her eyes as she cradled the child. “I …  we …  we have a _baby_ … ”

Garrus perched on the table beside her, slipping his arm around her lower back and stroking the child’s head. “We do. And she’s gorgeous.”

Shepard couldn’t tear her eyes off the tiny warm body in her arms, which had since calmed down and was nestled against her bare chest. “It’s …  she’s a girl?”

He traced the outline of the soft plates on the little turian’s skull, feeling his chest swell with pride and love. “So it would seem.”

Shepard swallowed hard, blinking away tears. "We have a _daughter._ ” She leaned her head down and kissed the little one on her forehead lightly, the still-soft plates yielding ever so slightly to her lips. "Hello."

Garrus wrapped his other arm around Shepard, holding both her and the baby close, protectively, lovingly. “We have a _family._ ”

 


	29. Beggars Who Ride

The ward was quiet. Shepard lay on her back, on a real cot now, propped up on pillows with her lower half covered in thin blankets, which didn’t do much to keep her warm. The hospital gown was papery and a strange minty green that made her look even more pale and dead … but the tiny being nestled in the crook of her arm didn’t seem to mind the chill Shepard felt, or the rustle of the gown every time she moved, or Shepard’s own lack of warmth.

Garrus had gone to get some sleep. He needed it. He’d told her some of what was going on outside her hospital room, and it had made her head spin. Here, on the _Parigoria_ , she didn’t have anything to worry about beyond the infant beside her, and healing. Resting.

Shepard was exhausted. She had vague recollections of the time she’d spent comatose, but nothing she could describe, and she wasn’t sleeping well. The first few nights had been fine – she’d been too tired to dream – but once her body had recuperated, the nightmares had come back.

At first, it was the old ones, the familiar terrors – the comfortable fears. Akuze, mostly, forty-five minutes of excruciating detail. Then Virmire started showing up, too, the memory of the bomb going off. Dying in space: the horrifying feeling of her air getting thinner while real and imagined stars spun around her, her ship burning behind her. The Prothean vision, looped, intertwined with the things she’d seen from Javik. Horizon; the Collector Base; people liquefying as she banged helplessly on their capsules. Aratoht and the Alpha Relay – her brain conjuring up scores of batarians vaporized instantly, a star system wiped off the map. The Reaper War: Khar’shan, Earth, Menae and Palaven, Cerberus on the Citadel – shooting Udina – Thessia – and back to Earth. The fight through London. Watching people fall. Dragging herself through the Citadel through piles of corpses. Arguing with the glowing child.

The nightmares usually segued into each other: she’d slam the door of the last prefab on Akuze, clutching her pistol to her heaving chest, only to find herself lost in the dark forest again, chasing the little boy until she stumbled into a Reaper assault on Thessia, or the rachni dens beside Grunt, or on the balconies at the Citadel with her gun pointing at Udina’s head  …  and then the forest again, and over and over until she woke up, stifling her screams from long years of practice.

She stayed mostly awake for a few days, lying to Miranda about whether or not she’d slept until the Australian woman actually went and checked the data – at which point she’d administered a sedative and Shepard had sunk deep into sleep for eight hours  …  and as she rose, slowly, out of the medically-induced slumber, a new dream came.

Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. Like someone had flipped the lights off and your eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. Eventually Shepard could see small twinkling points: like the night sky, but infinitely larger, like it was the entire universe.

Shepard had grown up in space, surrounded by its inky impenetrable blackness pricked through by tiny pinholes of white: tiny pinholes that could grow to unimaginably huge spheres of fire, if you got close enough. Space had been home, as a kid, a home and a playground. There was nothing more inspirational than the depths of space, the nebulae of galaxies, the infinity of it all.

Shepard had died in space, spinning into its unforgiving vacuum, the embrace of Alchera’s unfamiliar and uncaring ice an unfriendly sight as she felt her lungs straining, her blood thinning, her brain dying. It had taken her a long time to push away the sensation of falling every time she looked at a window – and zero-grav missions had been a literal hell. There was nothing more frightening.

This space, in her mind, this emptiness with the tiny pinpricks, was neither awe-inspiring nor panic-inducing. It was simply unsettling. And when she awoke from it, a very large part of her never wanted to sleep again.

She asked Miranda for something that would let her enter REM sleep quickly, so she could maximize brain rest while minimizing mental stress. Miranda had said she would see what she could do. That was earlier today, sometime around fourteen hundred hours ship time. Miranda had also asked if she might find the Commander a therapist.

Shepard had laughed, painfully, no more than a quickening of her breath.

“Oh, Randa,” she’d said, closing her eyes against the tears that were so much closer now that she was so tired and idle, “Randa, I’d burn them out in an hour. I’d go through every counselor in the galaxy before we were through.”

Miranda hadn’t said anything – she’d just put a hand on Shepard’s shoulder briefly before leaving the room.

Shepard looked down, now, at the turian baby in her arms. No one knew, yet, how this child had come to be – least of all Shepard herself. But the little one – still unnamed, as per turian tradition – felt warm in her arms, and seemed to know that Shepard was her mother … while Shepard’s body was not at all up to the task of breastfeeding (while the skin weave would probably hold against the baby turian’s teeth, she simply didn’t have the nutrients available to create the milk), the baby would still nuzzle at Shepard’s breast, and she was quietest and happiest when nestled against Shepard’s chest.

Shepard hadn’t ever considered she would be a mother. She’d thought about it, figured who knew – maybe she’d take some time off active duty, or try for command school, get a cushy job on a ship and try having a kid – but then the whole Saren thing had turned into the whole Reaper thing, and those dreams had flown right out the window. Not to mention her partner was completely biologically incompatible – though they’d discussed adoption. And Shepard had let herself dream about that one – maybe a little asari kid, or a human kid, God knew there would be enough orphans after the war—

And her train of thought would always stop, because she knew there wouldn’t _be_ an “after the war”.

Shepard had known, from the start – known deep down, in that place of certainty that had told her to talk to Saren, at the end; that had told her that Garrus was the right one; that had told her to destroy the Collector base; that had told her to—

She knew, from the moment she’d woken up on the Project Rho asteroid with far too little time to spare, from the moment she’d seen the nova of the Alpha Relay, from the moment she stepped over the threshold of her holding cell – she knew she was living on a countdown clock, she knew she was running out of time, she knew she was going to die.

There would be no marriage, no children, no quiet retirement on Intai’sei: no after the war.

And now here she was, on a hospital ship with only minor injuries and a baby beside her on the cot.

She’d never been sure about the existence of God, but having cheated death twice now either there was Somebody up there or she was just stupidly lucky. Some days she’d bet on the one, and some days she’d bet on the other. Some days she really wished Ash or Thane were there to talk to.

She’d asked Miranda for an omnitool a week ago. Miranda had given it to her, after extracting a promise that she wasn’t going to reveal her continued existence to the world, and that she wouldn’t use it to stay up unduly late. Shepard had laughed a bit, but had promised at least the first one.

She used it mainly for music. She’d asked Garrus, Tali, and Liara to send her some reports, so she could at least feel productive from behind the scenes – plus thinking about numbers and trying to solve intergalactic political problems put her to sleep, which didn’t hurt – but no one was really asking her opinion (mainly because most people didn’t know she was alive), so once she got bored she’d download some music from the extranet and she’d cuddle with the baby and just listen.

She flicked it on and closed her eyes, shifting the baby to a more comfortable spot as the music started.

_And the blood will dry underneath my nails_  
 _And the wind will rise up to fill my sails_  
 _So you can doubt and you can hate_  
 _But I know no matter what it takes_  
 _I’m coming home, I’m coming home_  
 _Tell the world I’m coming home_  
 _Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday_  
 _I’m coming home, I’m coming home  
_ _Tell the world I’m coming home_

* * *

Garrus entered the ward several hours later, the swish of the sliding door the only sound as he paused on the threshold. Shepard was asleep, and so was the baby. This was a rare, rare occurrence, and he hated to disturb them. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pondering his course of action.

“I’m not asleep.”

His eyes snapped open and his deep breath caught in his throat. Shepard’s right eye was open a crack, and she was almost whispering. The baby truly was asleep. Small mercies, he supposed. “Hi.”

“Your situational awareness has taken a hit since the fighting stopped.” He could see a glimmer of a smile.

He twitched a mandible in response and walked towards her. “I was distracted.”

“I’m not that pretty, Garrus.”

He perched on his chair beside her cot and stroked her cheek with a talon. “Yes, you are.”

She raised an eyebrow. “This green makes me look like death warmed over.”

“And you know I always like you best in your natural state.” He leaned over and kissed her as she chuckled.

“Touché, big guy. So what brings you in here at ridiculous o’clock in the morning?” She shifted upwards on the cot, re-settling the baby without waking her.

“Other than my mate? Oh, nothing; just your standard assassination and kidnapping attempts.” He tried to make it sound flippant; he was pretty sure he had failed, judging by the new pallor Shepard’s face took.

“Who’s trying to kill you? Don’t people have enough to do, you know, surviving?” She frowned, and he could tell she was running through a hit list in her head: Garrus’ enemies …   He had to smile. That list had been pretty long, once upon a time; probably a lot shorter now that Omega’d been cleared out a couple times.

“Not me, Shepard.” He shook his head.

Shepard furrowed her brow. “The Council? The Primarch? Oh God, is someone trying to kill _Liara?_ ”

Garrus smiled again and laughed in spite of himself.  “I’m pretty sure Liara would know about any assassination attempts on her own life before the assassin even bought the gun.” He sighed and swallowed, setting the joke aside. “No, Shepard, none of those: someone’s after _you_. You _and_ the baby.”

The look on Shepard’s face was inscrutable. She looked for all the world like she had never even considered this to be an possibility. She blinked, slowly, once, twice – then looked down at the baby and blinked again. “ … I thought no one knew I was alive.”

“Well,” he replied, “no one’s announced it. But a lot of people here know, because you’ve been here for months, and it’s hard to keep a secret on a ship of any kind, much less a hospital ship. It’s not like we haven’t been careful – everyone has had it impressed upon them how important it is that no one knows – but we knew it was going to happen eventually. No secret stays secret forever.”

Shepard exhaled, her torso caving in over the child as her head dropped to her chest. “Who is it?”

“We don’t know. It’s hard to know anything right now. We were lucky that Liara snagged a short-range comm transmission, and Glyph flagged it. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have known until it was far too late.”

“Damn.” Shepard rubbed a hand across her face. “Damn it. So what do we do?”

“We’re moving you.” He took her hand and stroked the back of it. “You’re in no shape to fight.”

Her hand tensed like she was going to throw his off, but instead she squeezed it. “Yeah. I know. I need a few months in training before I can go back to active duty.”

Garrus worried at the edge of his tongue with a tooth for a minute before replying. “Liara’s working on a ‘safe house’. She needs another day, tops. We’ll move in less than twenty-four hours. Don’t say anything about it to anyone, okay?”

She smiled slightly. “I know how to run a silent op, Garrus, don’t worry about it. You gonna wipe the cameras before you leave or should I?”

He laughed under his breath. “Tali’s got it under control.”

“So this never happened.” She grinned. “Right. Anything else you want to confess while no one but us and the kid gets to hear?”

He hesitated, then slid his other hand into his pocket. “Actually, uh  … “ She looked up at him, raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, there is—I do have something I wanted to—to say.”

She frowned a bit. “What’s wrong, Garrus?”

He shook his head. “Oh! No. No, nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to—uh  … “ He took a deep breath and let it out. “Oh for spirits’ sake, Shepard, I can deliver a flawless tactics presentation to the primarch and the councillor now, but I talk to you and it’s like I’m twelve again.”

She giggled. “If all you’ve done between age twelve and now is calibrate guns, shoot things, and make tactics presentations, then that’s hardly a surprise.”

“You’re hilarious.” He rolled his eyes.

“And you love me.” She squeezed his hand again.

“I do,” he replied, looking her straight in the eye. “I do, a lot. Shepard, I—” He took another deep breath and inched his chair closer to her cot. “I know we’ve kind of done things backwards, but— if you were still interested in being a one-turian kind of woman … ”

Shepard’s eyes had filled with tears. “Garrus, are you  …  ”

He pulled his hand out of his pocket, fingers closed over his palm. “Yeah. Yeah, Shep, I am.” He opened his hand to show a small ring, a thin black circle of metal that gleamed faintly in the dimmed overhead lights. “Will you marry me?”

Shepard’s face cracked into a bright, teary grin. “Of course I will.” She leaned over and rested her head on his carapace as he wrapped his free arm around her, the baby nestled between them and the ring still in his hand. They sat there together for a few seconds, breathing quietly in the silent, happy moment.

Then something far away exploded, and an alarm went off, and the baby woke up.


	30. Two Hundred Meters

Shepard wasn’t sure which was louder: the explosions, the sirens, or the baby in her arms. It made hearing Garrus a serious problem, even for her auditory implants. He was, it seemed, yelling into his omnitool – apparently whoever was on the other end was having trouble hearing him, too.

Finally he looked up at her, and pointed to his ear. She shook her head, balanced the baby carefully in her arm, and pointed to her own ear. He pointed to his omnitool, then held up his thumb and finger, so close they were barely touching. He then pointed to her, then the baby, and shook his head. He could hear his transceiver – but just barely – and he couldn’t hear her.

Garrus’s mandibles puffed open in thought, then he opened his mouth to speak.  He shook his head, and rapidly typed a message on his tool. It popped up on hers.

_That was Tali. She’s fighting their security suite; they’ve breached the ship but are on the other side._

Shepard nodded; another message scrolled in.

_We have to move. 200m to my shuttle. Can you do it?_

Shepard bit her lip, breathed in deeply, and swung her legs off the side of the bed. She swayed, unused to the motion and the sharp use of her muscles, but she kept hold on the baby and didn’t fall over, so that was a start. The world was a bit spinny, though, and the baby was awfully heavy. She looked up at Garrus, nodded at the baby, frowned, and shook her head. Not with the baby, she couldn’t. No way.

Garrus immediately held out his arms, and Shepard handed the little one over.  Garrus nestled her up against his carapace and held her tight – well, as tightly as he could; she was pretty squirmy – and Shepard hauled herself upright.

Garrus’ omnitool flashed. He read it sideways and showed it to Shepard.

_You’ve got three minutes. They’re in the patient wings but don’t know where you are. GO. – TZ_

Shepard took a deep breath, steadied herself, and pointed to the pistol on Garrus’ hip. His eyes widened and he shook his head. She glared at him, pointed again, and nodded vehemently, then pointed to him and to the baby in succession. Garrus sighed, tightened his mandibles, and handed her the gun.

Top model. Black market mods. Killer recoil dampeners. Silencer. An Archangel pistol. She hefted it – either it was really heavy or she was really weak – and then settled into a defensive stance, holding it in both hands, and moved towards the door. Two minutes fifty.

Garrus caught her shoulder, tapped her, then held up two fingers. She set her teeth and looked pointedly at the baby. Garrus immediately dropped a finger.

She smiled tightly and exited the room, her back to the wall, the pistol up by her shoulder. Garrus slipped out beside her, mimicking her pose except with a baby instead of a gun. Her omnitool flashed, she brought her arm down, and a map of the ship displayed above her wrist. Garrus reached over and tapped their exit point. She studied the map, then nodded and shut it off. Two minutes thirty.

Onward. Slowly. Sirens still blaring, emergency lights flashing. Neither of them could hear any footsteps, so each corner was an exercise in caution as Shepard glanced around the corners before slipping around or leaping across the corridor.

By one minute forty-five she was gasping for air and had a massive stitch in her side, but they hadn’t come across anyone else and they were halfway there. She held up a hand and leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath. Garrus put a hand on her shoulder and let her breathe three full times before nudging her forward. She inched up to the next intersection and peeked around cautiously, gun at the ready.

She immediately pulled back and shook her head sharply. She held up three fingers, then pointed to her gun. Three hostiles, armed. Garrus drew a small cross on his head – the human sign for a hospital – and she bit her lip, then peeked around the corner again. Back once more, with another head shake. Definitely not hospital workers.

Garrus’ mandibles flared. One minute thirty had suddenly become zero, and they still had a hundred meters to go. Nothing, if you were in good health, weren’t trying to avoid hostiles, and didn’t have a screaming baby – a marathon, otherwise. Suddenly they were both very glad of the alarms masking the child’s shrieking.

Shepard had a strange look on her face; one he hadn’t seen since the battlefield. It took him a second to place it, and then he saw her count to three before throwing herself around the corner.

It was her battle-tactics face. The one where she’d plan out an attack to the nanosecond before putting it into action. The one that usually meant she was about to do something incredibly heroic, or incredibly stupid – but usually both.

A lot of people ended up dead shortly after Shepard made that face. Garrus sincerely hoped that this time, Shepard wouldn’t be one of them.

Shepard fired three times in such rapid succession Garrus wasn’t convinced she hadn’t magically turned his semi-automatic pistol into a fully-automatic machine gun – and then she was across the corridor, pistol pointed at the ground, chest heaving, watching him.

He sketched an X in the air. She held up two fingers and nodded, then dropped a finger and pointed to her abdomen. Two dead, one wounded. Okay. Moving on.

He moved up to the corner and peeked around. The not-dead merc was attempting to get up, but from here it did indeed look like a gutshot. He looked up at Shepard, who backed up a few steps and half-turned down the corridor: ready to go. He leapt, shielding the baby with his body, and then they both took off. Ninety-six meters to go. Ninety-five. Ninety-four.

There were two more intersections they had to cross, and two turns. Shepard pulled up the map as she ran, tracing the most likely route the mercs had taken. She drew an X across the last of the two intersections, right near the shuttle bay – probably more mercs. Where else would you go, if you were heading people off?

Eighty-five meters to go. Five meters to the first intersection. Shepard edged up to it, glanced around, checked the map, nodded, and moved on. Seventy-five meters. Seventy. Sixty-five. At a turn, now, hang a left, run—

A merc stood in their way, a human male, dark heavy armour, scratched-out insignia, full helmet with one-way visor, a couple cursory yellow and white lights, a vicious-looking heavily-modded assault rifle, silencer and ammo mods—

Garrus threw up his arm and the merc flew down the corridor with an inaudible bang, smacking into a wall and falling limp against the floor. They both kept running, feet pounding, Garrus’ arm beginning to cramp from holding the baby so tightly. Fifty-five, fifty, forty-five, forty – second turn, a right this time, around and clear and _go go go_ , thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, twenty, final intersection, pull to a halt five meters before the junction—

In front of a locked door.

Garrus pushed Shepard up against the wall, shifted the baby to her arms, dropped to his knees and yanked open the control panel. Shepard braced herself against the steel railing, baby on her hip, pistol out in front of her, eyes alert, waiting, watching—

_There, fire, shoot—_

A woman down with a shoulder wound, one coming behind her, the door was open, Garrus was pulling her through it, throwing an Overload out in front of them as she shot again – nailed him in the shin –

Three more outside the door: Garrus caught one with a concussive shot, Shepard fired at another and hit him in the side, whirled to hit the other only to find Garrus had tossed him bodily down the hall –

Keep going, keep going, run, run, ten meters, last steps, Garrus was keying the bio-locked door controls –

Shepard nearly fell into the shuttle, going to one knee, dropping the pistol, clutching the baby, rolling over onto her back as Garrus palmed the door shut and locked it then leapt across the bay and threw himself into the pilot’s seat, fingers flying across the controls, flying the tiny shuttle out into space as normally as possible, inconspicuously circling a large turian cruiser before throttling back and joining a queue of other small ships headed for Terra One.

 


	31. Home Sweet Home

Garrus got out of the pilot’s seat and came over to Shepard, lifting her – and the baby – up and across the deck, sitting them down in the co-pilot’s seat. Their ears were ringing. Shepard’s chest was heaving. The baby was screaming. The shuttle was on autopilot.

Garrus knelt beside Shepard and looped his arms around her and the baby. She let her head fall onto his carapace. They stayed like that for a couple minutes, just breathing, just resting. Eventually Shepard’s breathing returned to normal, she regained a bit of colour in her face, and she rolled her head back onto the headrest. The baby calmed down, nestling in against Shepard’s chest. Garrus let go and rocked back on his haunches. “You okay?” he asked, quietly.

“Yeah,” she replied, “don’t think I’m any more the worse for wear than I was a few minutes ago. Exhausted. That was a hell of a run. The adrenaline’s abating. Any food on here?”

His mandibles waved out in a smile. “Maybe a couple of MREs. I do have some of your old fatigues, though.”

She smiled back. “An MRE sounds heavenly. So do clothes. I take it you were prepping to move me in this particular shuttle.”

“Yep.” He stood, crossed to a storage locker, and took out a slightly-faded pair of Alliance battle fatigues, then opened another and grabbed a vacuum-wrapped packet. Crossing back to her, she offered him the baby, whom he took in exchange for the fatigues and packet. The baby squalled slightly, but settled into Garrus’ carapace quietly enough.

Shepard tore open the MRE and began eating the pack of crackers, squeezing nutrient paste onto them as she went. She swallowed and looked up at Garrus, who was rocking the baby gently. “Would you believe me if I said this was better than hospital food?”

He snickered. “Not sure. Pretty sure it’s the same supplier.”

“Ha ha.” She polished off the crackers and opened the cookie, nibbling at it. “Mmm. Ginger snap. I don’t think I’ve had a ginger snap since my last tour on an official Alliance ship.”

“Gardner never made them?”

“Nah. Ginger’s expensive. I’ve no doubt this is artificial, though. Anyway Gardner didn’t like ginger much. Preferred cocoa. Like we ever had the cash for that, either.” She grinned and finished the cookie. “That’ll do for now I think.”

“Not going to eat your main course? I picked spaghetti and meatballs, just for you.”

“Aw, my favourite!” She chuckled. “I’ll eat it later. I can only fit so much food at a time right now.” She stood, slowly, setting the mostly-full packet on the chair along with the fatigues. She reached behind herself and untied the hospital gown, letting it drop to the deck. “It’s cold in here … ”

Garrus smiled. “The _Parigoria_ ’s pretty warm. Also, Shepard … you’re gorgeous.”

Shepard turned around once, examining herself. “I’m covered in scars, I’m one step up from emaciated, and not all the skin grafts have quite taken so I look like a cyborg. You are bullshitting me, Garrus Vakarian.”

Garrus had paused in his rocking of the baby – who had fallen asleep – and was now gazing at her, tracing the small curve of her buttocks, the sharp angles of her hips, and the slight mounds of her breasts. “No, I’m not. You’re absolutely gorgeous, and I love you.”

Shepard wrapped her arms around her chest and looked away. “I look like I should be on an operating table, not…yeah.”

He tilted the pilot’s chair back and locked it in place, nestling the baby into its crook. He grabbed Shepard’s fatigues from the other chair and tucked them in around the baby, then reached out and placed his hand on Shepard’s shoulder. Her skin was warm to the touch. “Not what?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’ve never thought of myself as pretty, but at least I used to have some meat on my bones. Now I just look weak.”

He wrapped his arms around her from behind, nuzzling the side of her head with his mandible. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the galaxy who would call you weak. Least of all me. And I’ve always thought of you as pretty.”

Shepard leaned her head into his affectionate nuzzling. “I know. I mean … thanks.”

Garrus held her tighter. “Any time. Anyway, until you accept that you’re gorgeous and there’s nothing you can do about it, I’ll just have to believe it enough for the both of us.”

She chuckled. “I missed you, Garrus.”

“I missed you too, Shepard.”

She turned around in his arms and hugged him back, settling her arms around his waist and leaning her head on his cowl. “We haven’t touched like this in a long time.”

“Not since London.”

“That’s … what, ten months?”

“About that, yeah.”

“Long time.”

“Mm hmm.”

“You’re warm.”

“So are you.”

“Probably a bit of fever.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Tired. Weak. … In love.”

He nuzzled her head again. “You’re not the mushy type, Shep.”

She held him a little tighter. “No, I’m not, I guess. But … I missed you. A lot. I never thought we’d get to have … this.”

He squeezed her gently. “Neither did I. Do you like it?”

She exhaled in a little laugh. “I think so. I’ve only been awake for about a week and a half, though, so give me some time to process.”

“Okay.” He nipped at her ear gently. “What should we do in the meantime?”

“Mm, that feels nice. I don’t know. ‘Try not to die’ usually tops our list of priorities, and now seems to be no exception. After that … ” She slipped her hand underneath the hem of his shirt and ghosted her fingers up his back, tilting her head up to gaze at him. “Anything goes, I suppose.”

They touched foreheads. The comm went off. The baby woke up.

“Oh for Spirits’ sake.” Garrus squeezed Shepard gently then let go and moved over to the comm. He picked the baby up out of the fatigues and tossed the clothes over to Shepard before unlocking the pilot’s seat and sitting in it, opening the comm channel while Shepard dressed behind him.

A crackly female voice came out of the speaker. “Hierarchy shuttle _Acus_ , this is Terra One Docking Control, Corporal Shade speaking. Please respond.”

“ _Acus_ here, Lieutenant Gabrielus speaking. What can we do for you, Terra One? We’re on a routine supply run, in and out like usual,” Garrus replied.

The voice took a second to respond. “Affirmative, Lieutenant. You’re early.”

“Some perishable cargo got nudged up the priority list; I don’t argue with the big guys. They should have called ahead – sorry about that. Are we good to dock?”

“Negative, Lieutenant, sorry. We’ve got a massive backup. All available personnel are working to clear it, but I can’t give you a timeline. I can send you to the SSV _Kathmandu_ ; they can unload your cargo and send it our way when we clear up.”

“Affirmative, Corporal. That sounds just fine to me.”

“Sending you the coordinates now. Terra One out.”

Garrus punched the new coordinates into the nav system, then leaned back in his chair, cradling the baby and staring out the front viewscreen.

Shepard slipped into the co-pilot’s seat, fully clothed. “Did you get demoted? Do turians get new names when they get demoted?”

Garrus laughed. “No no. Ha. Very funny. That was all code. That was Liara – she’s found numerous plants at Terra One from the organization looking to kill you. We would have switched shuttles there if we could, but that’s not an option anymore, so we’ve moved to plan B.”

"What's plan B?"

“Home sweet home.”

The _Kathmandu_ loomed up out of the sparse, swirling mass of ships in constant motion: an Alliance cruiser in drydock, undergoing repairs it had sustained during the Battle of Earth. It had numerous tiny shuttles flitting around it, carrying mechanics and engineers to hull breaches, electronics failures, and shielding breakages. A frigate was perched near the main gun and had walkways built out to it; Shepard could see tiny little people in EVA suits hanging on.

“I’ve been with the Alliance for months now, if that’s what you mean—”

Garrus smiled and shook his head, ducking under the bulk of the crippled cruiser and into its shadow. He swung the engines into reverse and fired them, gliding to a stop in front of a patch of empty space. Shepard raised an eyebrow and glanced at him. He tapped a short sequence into his comms array, then sat back to wait.

Five seconds passed, then ten, and then—

And then a docking bay door shimmered into existence in what had previously been empty air, and then it slid open and Garrus eased the shuttle into the bay full of Alliance-gray crates and boxes, settling down onto the landing treads and shutting off the engines.

Shepard’s jaw had dropped open. “I’m out for ten months and we develop cloaking technology? _Fuck_.”

Garrus laughed again. “In a manner of speaking.” He hit the control to open the shuttle door and stood up as it swung open. Shepard rose, too, and led the way out of the shuttle, walking slowly down the ramp before stepping down onto the bay floor.

Shepard looked over at Garrus, standing beside her, and began to speak. “This docking bay feels awfully familiar.”

Garrus glanced at her. “It damn well should. Don’t tell me you’ve got amnesia on top of everything else.”

Shepard frowned. “You mean this—this isn’t the _Kathmand_ u?”

“ _Lola!!_ ” came a shout from behind a particularly tall stack of crates. “You’re early! Doc said you wouldn’t be here till tomorrow!”

Shepard blinked. “…James?”

Vega popped out from behind the tower and grinned. “In the flesh, Commander! Welcome home!”

Shepard tilted her head slightly, then looked around at the bay she was standing in. She took in the curved struts, the railing beside the shuttle, the towers of crates. She suddenly heard the engines thrum to life, and felt the rumble deep in her bones. She closed her eyes, the sensation of the ship sinking into her like warmth when you strip off your EVA suit.

The Commander started to smile. It was a soft smile, a familiar smile, an old smile. She sank to her knees and put her hands on the floor, then her forehead. She exhaled softly, breathing in the smell of metal and plastic, of ozone and static. She pressed her lips to the metal gently, then whispered into the panelling.

“Hello, old friend."


	32. A Sit-Rep for Shepard

Shepard stood at the head of the small conference table, leaned on it with both hands, and shifted her gaze between her present crewmembers. James, EDI, Joker, Tali, Kaidan, Traynor, Dr. Chakwas, and Garrus with the baby. Only a handful. They were surrounded by Tali's technology, which went in and out of the walls and covered about half the table, but it was still a decent place for a meeting.

"Okay," she said, pushing up and standing straight, arms crossed. "I need a sit-rep. A  _massive_ sit-rep. Step by step."

"Where do you want us to start?" Joker asked, a hint of a smirk on his lips.

Shepard returned the smile, but it was a hard smile with little warmth. "From London."

"You disappeared-" James started.

"The Reapers went offline-" Samantha interjected.

"Everything went to hell," Kaidan finished, stepping forward slightly. "Search and rescue efforts kicked into high gear. So did rebuilding. From what Admiral Anderson's told me, you were found inside a Reaper in the middle of Great Britain in a coma. Took them at least a day or two to cut you out. They transferred you to the Parigoria for security and proper medical attention."

Tali stepped forward. "When the Reapers went offline, there was a huge shockwave. Joker got us out of the Sol system, but we had to do a blind jump and our nav system failed when the shockwave passed us - it fried EDI, too. We crashed on an uncharted planet and were stuck there for about four months, scavenging and repairing the ship."

"We limped back to the Exodus Cluster about a month later," Joker chimed in, "and got stuck there for a couple days while we figured out how to get the mass relay back online. Turns out they'd all been shut down."

"Probably the same shockwave that fried us," Tali added.

"Tali got the relay back online, we met up with your mom at what's left of Arcturus Station, and they figured out that relay, and we finally made it back to Earth," Joker finished.

"Everyone has been in intense discussions about supply shortages and relay reactivation," Samantha said. "Most of the fleets are on their last supplies."

"It's starting to get messy Earth-side," Kaidan added. "Everywhere's still a disaster zone and everyone's dead on their feet. There's been talk of some of the nation conglomerates dissolving - maybe even civil war."

"The Admiralty has been working with the Hierarchy to supply dextro rations, but we're running low, too," Tali broke in. "And there's not much anyone can do for the smaller groups out here, like the hanar and the volus. The asari have been doing alright; the krogan are doing their best to stick to a game plan but they're getting restless."

"Everybody wants to go home, Lola," James finished.

Shepard leaned both hands on the table again, then took a deep breath and let it out. "And meanwhile Commander Shepard has a baby. Great. We just can't seem to catch a break, can we?"

Mild smiles flitted around the table, and Dr. Chakwas spoke. "It's good to know that life goes on, Shepard."

"I suppose so." Shepard lifted her head and cracked a smile before standing up again. "So what do we do? What's next?"

EDI joined the conversation. "Tali has devised a way of reactivating the mass relays. The technology has been added to a ship from each major species' fleet. The Normandy has volunteered to lead the reactivation effort; it is a convenient way to keep you safe while continuing in our position as strong supporters of galactic civilization."

Shepard laughed slightly. "Bit of a change, you know, going from leading the vanguard to being kept safe. I'm not sure I like it yet."

There was an uncomfortable silence that stretched for several seconds before Kaidan spoke up. "We can't lose you, Shepard."

She didn't respond for a minute, nor did she meet anyone's eyes. Finally, she looked up, caught Kaidan's gaze with hard eyes, and said, "Yeah."

More silence, broken this time by EDI. "Commander, Admiral Hackett would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience."

Shepard dropped Kaidan's gaze and turned to EDI, raising an eyebrow. "Knowing him, he's already on the comm waiting for me. Am I right?"

EDI nodded. "He is available on the war room channel."

Shepard let out another long breath. "Alright. Well. Here we go. Tali, if you haven't already, I'd like you to coordinate with the other relay-reactivation ships and decide on a plan of attack so we're not all going to the same places. We may need to coordinate defense escorts, as well - I know the Reapers are supposedly dead and gone, but Cerberus might still be lurking in the corners, or independent mercs, and if I'm reading this right, this technology needs to be kept safe and intact." Tali nodded. "Kaidan, I'd like a report on the state of Earth and Systems Alliance governance by tomorrow morning, earlier if at all possible. Actually," she glanced around, "I'd love one on the Hierarchy and the quarian fleet too, and the asari if we can manage it. The big players. Sam, give Kaidan a hand. Call Liara if you need to." Kaidan and Sam both nodded as well. "James, I want a damage report. On the Normandy specifically, but give me rough numbers and expected situations of major planets and fleets. Make a note of rebuilding efforts, too. Coordinate with Steve, he'll have contacts up already. Miranda will know, too, if she's available." James saluted. "That's everything I can think of at the moment. If anyone has anything they think I should know, send it my way. Understood?" Nods from around the table. "Excellent. Dismissed."

No one moved.

Shepard looked around the room and furrowed her brow. "...You're all dismissed. You can go. We've all got work to do."

Tali stepped forward, moving around the table slightly. "Shepard-" She sounded as if she couldn't quite finish the sentence. She continued around the table until she was right at Shepard's side, then tentatively wrapped her arms around the frail human.

Joker spoke from across the room. "I think what Tali's trying to say is that we're really glad you're back, Commander."

 


	33. The Turian Equivalent of Ramen

"You are very much avoiding her," Garrus said, staring at his console and tapping purposefully. "We leave the system in two days. You've been a grandfather for a week and a half and you haven't come to see your granddaughter."

"The Primarch has had me in meetings every day for the past week, and I wanted to give you two time to- you know-" The elder Vakarian's voice buzzed through the comm link, a small vidlink image projected in the top-right corner of Garrus' screen.

"Oh come on, Dad," Garrus replied, looking straight up at the holocamera at the top of the frame, "we both know you could've asked Adrien for a break to visit your  _granddaughter_. I'm  _pretty sure_ he would've said yes."

Aelianus, even on the grainy vidlink, looked nervous, his mandibles twitching as he avoided Garrus' eyes. "Well, yes, I suppose he would've."

Garrus stopped typing, stood back and crossed his arms. "Dad. I know I got pissed at you. I know we still have things to talk over and work out. But nothing's going to get better if you keep avoiding us. I can't keep the 'Dad's busy' charade up much longer. Shepard is beginning to think I'm lying and that we  _aren't_ on any better terms than we were before."

Aelianus' mandibles opened wide as he looked up briefly, and then they fell limp and he looked down. "I understand, Garrus. I just… I've been doing a lot of thinking, and realizing just how bad things were between us and how much of that was my fault, and I don't want-"

Garrus quirked one mandible off to the side in a smirk. "To make things worse again? Then come say hello to your granddaughter. We've got some stuff we'd like to talk to you about, too - and I suspect Specialist Traynor will want to corner you and pick your brain about supply shipments and the turian relay-reactivation plan."

Aelianus' shoulders shook in a slight chuckle. "Well, I certainly can't say no to Miss Traynor. Alright. I'll come by. I have one report I truly do need to finish. What would you say to sharing an evening meal?"

"That sounds perfect. I'll let Joker know you'll be docking sometime this evening. Thanks, Dad." The younger turian flashed both mandibles in a smile.

His father returned the smile and nodded. "I'll see you this evening, then, Garrus. Aelianus out." He cut the comm link, and Garrus shook his head and returned to his console just as the doors swished open behind him.

"What did I hear through the door about dinner with your father?" Shepard stepped through the doors and up beside his console, baby on her hip, military-grade plastic soother in her mouth.

Garrus looked over at her, mandibles spread wide, and held his arms out for the baby, whom Shepard transferred over for fatherly cuddles. "I hope you didn't have anything else planned. He suggested it. I was getting on his case for avoiding us and he finally gave in."

"Oh?" Shepard stretched while replying, both arms behind her head followed by a few waist bends. "Things are better between you two, I take it?"

"Yeah." Garrus bounced the baby up and down on his hip a few times, making her giggle, and then settled her against his chest. "I reamed him out about some old stuff not long after we first got back. We had a few good discussions after that. Once you woke up and had the baby, he sort of … got scared off. Didn't want to fuck up again."

"Mm." She nodded. "So what's for dinner?"

"Not sure yet. I was going to finish this stage of the re-calibrations on the Thanix and then go see what was left in the stocks. I'm sure I can come up with something."

Shepard chuckled. "Good luck. We're awfully low on dextro rations. I think we're down to the turian equivalent of ramen."

Garrus took a deep breath before replying. "I'm … I'll figure it out. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Shepard just smiled nervously.

* * *

The small Hierarchy shuttle landed softly in the docking bay. It was hard to tell which half of the welcoming party looked more nervous: Garrus, wearing a sharply-cut black and navy civilian suit with three thin white stripes on the left shoulder, standing so stiffly you'd swear he was made of cardboard, holding the baby on his hip (who was dressed in a dark green jumpsuit) like she was going to explode; or Shepard, clad in full Alliance dress uniform, a rainbow of ribbons on her chest, two thick and one thin bright yellow ribbons on her shoulders, collar buttoned right to her chin, standing at-ease with her hands behind her back, still-patchy hair pulled back into a ponytail, exuding an aura of cold confidence (which Garrus knew to be a well-practiced cover).

The shuttle door swung upward and Aelianus Vakarian stepped out, dressed similarly to his son but in steel grey and dark green with three thin and one thick white stripe on the shoulder, mandibles pressed tightly against his face. He stood very still on the loading bay deck for several seconds, the atmosphere between the three of them becoming very, very tense.

"Welcome to the  _Normandy_ , Praetor," Shepard said as calmly as she could manage.

Aelianus forced his mandibles out into a smile. "I appreciate the invitation, Commander," he replied, bowing slightly.

"Any time," she said, smiling loosely. "I'm afraid we don't have a private dining hall on board for officers and distinguished guests, but I assure you we won't be disturbed during our meal."

The elder turian began to reply, but was interrupted by a squawk from the baby, who had spit out her soother and was waving her arms wildly. All three adults snapped their gazes to the little one. Garrus looked like he was about to melt into the floor, Shepard looked like she couldn't decide whether she was horrified or terrified, and Aelianus-

Aelianus' mandibles spread into a huge, heartfelt grin, and he fairly leapt forward to pull the baby from his son's arms, swooping the tiny turian around in a circle before pressing his forehead to hers and fluttering his mandibles against her cheek.

Garrus felt his heart skip a beat. Shepard's expression morphed into slack-jawed shock.

Aelianus nestled the infant against his cowl, still grinning as he looked up at them. "She's  _feisty_ for a week and a half."

" _Tell_ me about it," Shepard fairly exploded. "I mean I knew kids were a handful, but  _hell_."

Garrus looked between his father and his mate, his brain refusing to process the sudden familiarity.

Aelianus nodded sympathetically. "Solana was pretty quiet, but you'd swear Garrus didn't have to breathe, he cried so much."

Garrus blinked. Shepard snickered.

"So, son," the shorter turian said, turning to Garrus, "what's for dinner?"

* * *

Shepard rocked the baby one-handed in a small upright-basket contraption Tali had rigged up as they ate dinner - not quite ramen, she had to admit, but some sort of noodle concoction. She'd made her own - essentially spaghetti and meat sauce - but Garrus had mixed a green sauce together for himself and his father.

"We're going to work our way across Alliance space towards the Armstrong Nebula," Garrus was saying between bites, "and meet up with the quarians, who are going to go north of that through the Attican Traverse and work towards Rannoch. We're bringing as many geth units as we can, but it'll take a few trips. The turians are headed to Palaven, of course, by way of the Serpent Nebula, and the krogan will go with them to Tuchanka. The asari will get to Thessia first and then they'll team up with the turians to reactivate the relays in outer council space. I think we're supposed to head through the Terminus Systems after we stop at Rannoch, since we're the stealthiest and no one really knows what will have happened up there in the last few months. Either the turian or asari team will go with us, I think."

"Pretty sure it's the lone salarian ship, actually," Shepard interjected, swallowing a mouthful of pasta.

"Right, you're right, it's the STG unit. Forgot about them. They're stopping off in the Annos Basin and then following the quarians through the Traverse until we meet up with them in the Caleston Rift before we hit the Omega Nebula."

"What's the plan for previously-dormant relays?" Aelianus asked, twirling noodles onto his fork.

"We're making a list and leaving them be, for now," Shepard responded. "We've got to get the main systems up and running first, to coordinate rebuilding efforts galaxy-wide and see where the needs are highest. There's been some talk of exploration later, though, but I don't know what will come of that."

Aelianus nodded. "Good plan. We don't need any surprises right now."

"Definitely not," Shepard agreed, "I think we're good for surprises for a while."

"Unless they're good ones," Garrus added.

"Fair point."

They ate in silence for a minute or two before the baby squawked again, Shepard resumed rocking her, and Aelianus spoke. "Shepard, during your convalescence I had the opportunity to do some reading on human relationship traditions-"

Garrus instantly tensed, mandibles clutched to his jaw. "Dad, I don't think that's exactly dinner conversation-"

Aelianus continued his sentence over his son's objection, his voice calm and earnest. "-and I can't help but wonder if the ring you're wearing has the significance I believe it to have. If so, I'd like to offer my congratulations - to the  _both_ of you," he finished, glancing over at Garrus, who seemed to deflate in slight disbelief. Or perhaps that was bewilderment.

Shepard flicked her eyes between the two men, the corner of her mouth ghosting into a smile. "Yes, Aelianus, it means what you think it means. Garrus asked me just before we had to leave the  _Parigoria_. It was quite romantic, I suppose, by our standards." Her slight smile turned into a grin as Garrus' mandibles fluttered in mild embarrassment.

The elder Vakarian's mandibles spread widely in delight. "Then congratulations are indeed in order. I'm very glad to hear my wayward son has finally decided to do something akin to settling down."

Garrus' mandibles fluttered even harder, but Shepard recognized the jibe for what it was. If turians could have twinkles in their eyes, she mused, Aelianus had a galaxy in his at the moment.

"Now," Aelianus continued, pushing his empty bowl aside and leaning forward on the table, steepling his fingers, "I feel it is my duty as … ah, what's the human term …  _father-in-law_ , yes - I feel it is my duty to ask whether or not you two intend to follow turian customs, as well as human."

"Well," Shepard started, looking over at Garrus, "I honestly can't say I  _know_ very much about traditional turian relationships - to be quite frank," she continued, shifting her gaze to Aelianus, "we never really thought we'd get to this point. When you're sort of  _spear-heading_  a war, it seems almost..."

Aelianus nodded. "I completely understand. Garrus said much the same thing when we … discussed this earlier. Please don't mistake my inquiry as a judgment. I am simply curious - and, like any good turian, I enjoy my customs and traditions, and speaking from the position of father and father-in-law, I would be thrilled if you chose to include some."

Garrus spoke up at last. "I definitely think we will," he said, glancing at Shepard, who nodded. "I'm not sure how we'll combine everything, but we'll find a way."

"Speaking of turian traditions," Shepard added, rocking the baby again, "when does she get a name? All Garrus said was 'not yet' and didn't say when the 'yet' was."

"Ah," Aelianus said, "yes. You'll forgive me if I give you a small history lesson?"

Shepard nodded. "By all means. I'm interested."

"Then I," Garrus said, standing and gathering bowls, "am going to tidy up and make us coffee and  _rylke._ " He crossed to the small kitchen area.

Aelianus began speaking, Shepard leaning in with interest. "In ancient times, turians were mainly known by their personal markings. The tribal, predatory nature of our society made for small groups, wherein names were not truly needed. To refer to someone who was not present, we would use their profession, and a distinguishing marking if need be. Children were referred to as scions of their parents - "child of the stonemason", and so on. When the child reached the point where they could take on their own profession, they would then be referred to by their profession just like everyone else." He cleared his throat gently and continued. "Clearly we have moved beyond that level of society, eventually taking names of our choosing, most based again on our profession. For a time, children were referred to by the surnames of their parents, these being passed down from the original chooser. Mates could choose to take each other's surnames if they so desired - at some point, it became common for the lower-caste mate to take the surname of the higher-caste mate, though it is not a universal practice, especially if it is a late mating or an interspecies mating. Parents typically pass on the common surname to their children, or decide which to use when both have kept their surnames - typically, in an interspecies mating, the species of the child determines the surname, but again, that is not a universal practice."

Shepard interjected. "If I'm understanding you correctly, then, will our daughter choose her own name at some point?"

Aelianus made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. "In a way," he replied. "For a long time, it was customary to give a child a designator based on birth order until they chose their own name, which was usually when they finished school. As we expanded into the galaxy and our family trees grew, however, this became untenable, and we ended up with a system of nomenclature similar to the salarians' current system. Being a people very concerned with efficiency as well as precision, it was decided that we would adopt the asari custom of naming shortly after birth, while keeping the tradition of allowing children to choose a name when they completed their education. It simplified a lot of paperwork, that's for certain."

Garrus returned to the table, setting steaming mugs down in front of each of them before sitting down. "Most parents choose a name for their child about a week after birth, or a week after returning home."

Shepard picked up her mug and sniffed it appreciatively. "That seems rather arbitrary."

Aelianus nodded, sipping from his mug. "Thank you, son. Yes, Shepard, it is more than slightly arbitrary. If memory serves, it stems directly from the asari practice, which is infused with several of their religious customs. Siari beliefs state that 'all is one', and this of course includes newborns. Asari newborns were - and still are, for devotees - prayed over by maidens for several days in their home dwelling place, while the community matrons and matriarch would meditate on the correct name for the child. They would then agree by consensus, as asari do. When turians first adopted the custom, we altered it to fit our own religion, and early names were frequently related to spirits that were believed to be strong in the family or in the area. As the custom progressed, parents would choose names based on characteristics they believed they saw in the newborn, or ancestral names, or spiritual names. Much like humans choose names for their children, as I understand, but turians are slightly more cautious and give it a bit more time."

Shepard mulled all this over and sipped her coffee. "Then we could name her at any time?"

"Certainly," the elder Vakarian replied, "she is your daughter and it is of course your choice when and what to name her."

Garrus spoke up. "Ah, Shepard- I may have bought a, well, a baby name book. We can...look at them tonight if you want." His subvocals - and slight stutter - betrayed a hint of nervous embarrassment, and both Aelianus and Shepard hid similar smiles behind their mugs, meeting gazes across the table.


	34. We Are Not So Easily Beaten

Aelianus cleared his throat and spoke. “Shepard, if you don’t mind my asking, how was your conversation with Admiral Hackett? I have been working with him relatively closely and would be interested to hear how things are going from the human perspective. He can be rather tight-lipped.”

Shepard chuckled, setting her mug down. “I can’t tell you everything - a lot of it’s so classified I’m still working out how much I can tell the crew.” Aelianus acquiesced with a wave of his hand. “What I can tell you is that we’re basically as fucked as everyone else, which you probably already knew.”  

He nodded. “While we may have won the Reaper War, the outcome is more like a loss for almost everyone. And we haven’t even tallied the final numbers yet. I doubt we will know the full repercussions of this war before at least two asari generations into the future.”

Shepard heaved a sigh. “That sounds about right to me, too. So the question becomes - where do we start?”

Aelianus drank deeply from his mug and swallowed before answering. “I honestly don’t know, Shepard. There are arguments to be made for an insular approach - everyone tries to get a handle on their own situation first - and also for a cooperative approach. There are difficulties with both.”

Garrus chimed in. “I suspect we’re going to have to do both. The galactic community was already, in many ways, extremely interconnected by necessity of trade and other obligations. The sheer amount of rebuilding will also dictate a certain amount of cooperation, especially in terms of resources.”

Shepard swirled the liquid in her cup, gazing at it thoughtfully. “That presumes there’s any resources left to use.”

Garrus flicked his mandibles. “Fair point. Which means there will have to be some exploration work done at the same time, and we’ll have to find a way to support that.”

Aelianus set his cup down and looked up at the ceiling. “Spirits. We don’t even have the central arm of galactic government steady at the moment. This is going to be hell.”

“You can say that again,” Garrus said, shaking his head.

Shepard pushed her mug aside and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Where are the councillors, currently? Do we have a way of entering the Citadel yet? No one’s told me much.”

Aelianus looked back down at her. “No one has managed to get into the Citadel yet. The focus has mainly been on the relays, communications, and immediate repair and supply - and while the Citadel may have significant resources on it, it has so far resisted any attempts to communicate with its systems. As to the councillors, all three are currently in the Sol system, with their respective races’ flagships.”

Shepard raised her eyebrows. “And… what are they up to?”

Aelianus’ mandibles fluttered in a slight smirk. “I know how much you love the Council, Shepard, but they are actually getting things done. I’ve been working personally with Sparatus since day one - he’s been instrumental in working out trade deals with the quarians for dextro rations, among other things. Tevos has been doing incredible work with the asari field hospitals. Valern has been flitting around with the STG, doing Spirits-know-what, but the name “Minos” has been popping up a lot in his private communiqués.”

Garrus coughed. “Which you’d know nothing about, of course.”

“Oh certainly not.”

Shepard frowned. “Minos. Don’t know the name. Sounds Greek, maybe. My point was, though, if they’re all in-system, why haven’t they taken charge?”

Aelianus waited a moment before replying. “Well. I wouldn’t consider this to be on-the-record, per se, but my personal opinion is that they’re taking some time to re-evaluate their political stances in the wake of a war that they should have seen coming. That we _all_ should have seen coming.”

Garrus cracked a half-smile, one mandible wide open. “Nothing you’d have _anything_ to do with whatsoever, Shep…”

Shepard snorted and rolled her eyes. “I’m glad they’ve finally pulled their heads out of their asses, then. In that case, as much as I have doubted their leadership abilities in the past, I think it’s beyond time they got back to doing what they’re really good at - being the point people.”

“Mm,” Aelianus acquiesced with a nod. “I think we are all at the stage that some action is needed, but no action can be taken unless we are all agreed on a strategy. And if there is one thing that the Citadel Council is good at, it’s strategizing.”

Shepard nodded. “I think the best way to kick this shindig off would be a big assembly of the minds... the Council, the top dogs from everybody else - the quarian Admiralty, the Hierarchy, whatever’s left of Earth’s government and the Systems Alliance, Wrex if we can find him - that sort of a deal. Put all the issues on the table, figure out the first steps, decide what can be safely tabled until later.”

Aelianus chuckled. “Careful, Shepard. You’ll end up in politics if you keep talking like that.”

Garrus shook his head. “Shepard, that is never going to work. Remember the last time we tried that? Before Tuchanka? It went to shit in about five minutes. No one is ever going to agree.”

Shepard eyed him with her steely glare. “Wanna bet?”

* * *

“This is a _stupid idea_ ,” Garrus hissed in Shepard’s ear as he tugged at the seams of her too-loose dress uniform.

Shepard took a deep breath and let it out. “Yup. Probably.” She adjusted her collar, rolled her right shoulder, and swallowed hard.

The tall, lanky turian stood back and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? You don’t have to. No one will blame you. You have too many friends out there for that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and then tilted her head up to look at him. “I know that. And you know I have to. You know why. And,” she smiled, “you know I’m right.”

He sighed and tugged at the loose fabric again, then ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

She took another deep breath, exhaled, and swallowed; she tugged at the hem of her tunic; she straightened and turned a quarter-step clockwise, shifting her gaze directly ahead of her to the door she would exit in approximately five minutes. “Then let’s go.”

Garrus nodded and stepped back. “I’ll get to my seat, then. Knock ‘em dead, Shep.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Always do, Garrus.”

* * *

The amphitheatre wasn’t exactly packed, but the atmosphere bristled with tension. The four-dozen-odd delegates, as well as their aides and secretaries, shifted nervously in their seats; not for lack of comfort - asari ships were designed for deadly force  _and_ comfortable discussion - but because you could  _feel_ the skin on everyone’s forearms prickle as the iron-and-navy turian entered from the back and strode to his seat. Not long now.

It had been no more than three days since Alliance High Command had announced that Staff Commander Shepard was alive. The announcement had been short and to the point, just a video of Hackett explaining the barest of details calmly to the camera. She had been injured in the Battle for Earth, and had been in a coma for several months. She was now awake and healthy, but would not be taking any press at this time. Oh, and by the way, she would be hosting and mediating a discussion on the galactic rebuilding effort on October 7, 2187, at 1200 hours standard galactic time, on board the asari dreadnought _Cyucrae_.

The galactic community had taken it well, on the whole. Sparatus, in particular, had admirably feigned surprise, while Tevos’ jaw had dropped for only about five seconds - and Valern had managed to only blink twice. It had taken a whole five minutes before the newly-reactivated Sol system extranet had exploded with the news, causing outages about five minutes later. There had only been minor dancing in the streets on Earth, with crowds of only several tens of thousands of people flooding city centres among the ruins of Reaper troops and Alliance ships. There hadn’t been any riots yet; Shepard personally thought that would likely wait until they announced she’d had a kid, and a turian at that. Her inbox had, unsurprisingly, exploded with well-wishes. She hadn’t opened it yet; Traynor was vetting them. There had been a few nasty pieces of hate mail in there, too.

And now it was 1155 hours galactic standard time, on October 7, 2187, and Shepard was standing behind a door in the _Cyucrae_ , breathing slowly, trying not to think about how frail she looked, trying instead to think of all the tricks she’d learned as an officer for looking bigger than you were, for looking intimidating and in-control, for holding a conversation on the topic you wanted it to be on.

It was tough. She hadn’t slept well. There were rustles of rushes in her ears, near-silent whispers – the inexperienced would have just heard the soft whistle of the air circulation system. If she closed her eyes, she could swear the points of light dancing behind her eyelids were _very_ well-organized.

She didn’t close her eyes very often. And so she didn’t sleep very well.

But she was here to deliver a speech, and to lead a discussion, and all she had to threaten people with was her voice and her handgun and she wasn’t even sure she could _take_ sixty-odd politicians, half of whom had significant military experience and of whom another quarter probably had special-ops credentials--

No. Breathe. She was here to talk, not to shoot.

Like talking to a Reaper.

The gaunt human woman, clad in a dark-blue Alliance dress uniform that had fit better before the stress of leading a war and the Reaper-induced coma, reached out, touched the panel at the side of the door, and stepped through it as it slid open. She walked calmly along the silvery-blue walkway to the dais at the center of the amphitheatre, her head held straight, her eyes set on a point somewhere between Dalatrass Al’dre and Matriarch Sianasheth.

She reached her mark, settled into an at-ease stance with her hands clasped behind her back, and opened her mouth to speak.

“Esteemed Councillors, honourable--”

Her words were cut off by a lone asari in the third row, who rose to their feet suddenly. Her eyes flicked to them, her mouth still open, waiting for a split second before she would go on to the word “matriarchs”, continue her carefully-rehearsed greeting.

The asari didn’t let her continue. Instead, they started clapping.

Shepard blinked.

Two turians in the second row stood and joined the asari in applause. Then a volus in the fourth row. Then the entire salarian delegation. And then, still before she could really recognize what was happening, every single person in the room was on their feet, applauding, some of them smiling, others with tears in their eyes.

Shepard blinked again, feeling tears of her own well up. She turned around, slowly, taking in the unexpected ovation, not sure how to acknowledge it, not even sure what she was feeling about it, not at all sure she deserved it.

Her eyes caught on a group of people who were _not_ applauding. The Alliance delegation, Hackett and Anderson in the front, were all standing ramrod-straight…

… and saluting.

Her throat caught. Her slow turn halted. She swallowed hard, straightened sharply, and saluted them back crisply, hoping the tear that was sliding down her cheek went unnoticed.

She’d never wanted recognition. She’d never wanted fame. In fact she’d always resented the curious glances of the people on the streets of the planets she visited. She had a job to do, damn it, and she didn’t need the distraction. Celebrity was for people who weren’t trying to save the galaxy.

She let the salute linger for several seconds. She saw Hackett’s head dip in the tiniest of nods, and she saw Anderson’s lips twitch in the most subtle of smiles.

Then she dropped her arm and completed her full turn, coming to a halt facing forward once more, the applause still washing over her like a waterfall.

She didn’t know what else to do. She clasped her hands behind her back again, and lowered her head, inclining forward in a slight bow.

When she lifted her head again, she spoke. Thank God for amplification systems.

“Thank you,” she said, hearing the applause die down, watching people take their seats again. “Thank you,” she repeated, as the last delegates sat. And finally, “Thank you,” once more, as the room settled into silence. “Esteemed Councillors, most honourable dalatrasses, matriarchs, and Primarch, admirals, honoured guests: thank you.” She cleared her throat. “I am… I am honoured by your gesture, but… I am not here to stand before you as a hero. I am here today to do what I have always done: I am here to ask for your support once again.”

She began to pace around the small dais as she continued. “While I have been incapacitated for these past several months, I am certainly aware of the deep and lasting effect war has on the galaxy, on its civilizations, on its people. I am here today to thank you for your support in ending what was arguably the greatest and most significant threat to the galaxy that will ever exist; I am here today to ask for your support in rebuilding that very same fractured, broken galaxy. There are many topics to be covered today, and many of them will be controversial just as they were before this great catastrophe of a war brought us all together. I ask for your understanding, for your compassion, and for your brightest and best ideas as we tackle the beginnings of the biggest rebuilding project in any of our civilizations’ history.

“This will not be an easy task, not today nor on any day in the future. We have lost almost everything: for some of us, all we have is in this room, and it is ourselves. We have next to no resources; until recently, we could not even feasibly leave this solar system. And so we must turn to our neighbour and ask, ‘What do you need?’ We must turn to our ancient enemies and ask, ‘How can I help you?’ Because it is in doing so that we will put our civilizations back together, brick by brick. Because this is the way that we will not only regain what was lost, but we will gain even greater things. Because _this_ is how we show the _dead hulks of the Reapers_ that _we are not so easily beaten!_ ”

She stopped again, standing straight, thin and frail but _very much alive_ , and you could _feel_ the life emanating out of her, the defiance and courage that brought down the Reapers, the strength and determination that took her to the beacon in the streets of London. The air in the room was absolutely still - it was as if every person in the room was holding their breath, waiting for her to speak again, waiting for the moment to break.

“I am here today to mediate. I am here today to make sure that we, all together, can create the first steps of a plan to bring our galaxy back to the way it was before this damn war and _beyond_. I am here today so that all of you in this room know that _we are not done_. I am here today because if anyone in this galaxy is proof that nothing is impossible, _I am_ , and _we’ve got work to do_.”

She stepped back, raising her arms, elbows bent, palms up, as if in invitation. “So,” she said, casting her gaze from left to right, “ _who’s with me?!_ ”

The entire room leapt to their feet and began applauding once more.

 


	35. Voyager

Tali swore through her teeth as she stared at the readouts on her shuttle screens. “Keelah,” she breathed, growling under her breath, “this thing is sealed tighter than an envirosuit at varren pit. Shepard, I don’t know how we’re going to get in here.” She turned her seat slightly, looking at Shepard over her right shoulder, the commander sitting on the shuttle’s side bench in full hardsuit.

Shepard didn’t look at her for a second, but then she turned her head, her visor cleared, and she gave a reassuring half-smile. “There’ll be a way. There’s got to be.”

Tali shook her head and turned back to her console. “I don’t know why you’re so optimistic. I’ve tried everything I can think of. It’s not that nothing’s _working_ , it’s that I can’t get any sort of response _at all_. It’s not opening. It’s dead in the water. We’re gonna have to _tow_ it to the Serpent Nebula at this rate.”

Shepard laughed. “That’s quite the image.”

“I’m serious, Shepard. I’m out of ideas. Unless you’ve got something up your sleeve, we’re done for the day. And the day before. And the day before that.”

Liara’s voice came in over the intercom. “Tali, have you tried the Keepers’ frequency? The maintenance frequency?”

“Yup. I’ve tried everything the Council gave me, everything _you_ gave me, and everything _Joker_ gave me. It won’t open. It’s shut tight. The Reapers have shut it down for good.” Tali threw her hands up and let them slump into her lap. “Looks like Earth’s got another moon, Shep.”

Shepard closed her eyes, let the afterimages of the shuttle’s interior lights fade into darkness, watched the rays and splotches of colour dance across her vision like nebulae, waited until the colours faded to blackness and the white pinpricks came out.

She listened to the whispers.

Liara came over the comm again, floating in her own shuttle on the other side of the massive station orbiting the earth. “There’s got to be something. What happened at the Battle of the Citadel?”

Tali sounded tired. “The Keepers reopened it, presumably. It just sort of happened. Everyone was too busy counting the dead.”

Liara was silent for a moment, then continued. “What if it’s something similar to the mass relays? A start command, an open command?”

“That’s all very well and good as a theory,” Tali replied, “but we don’t have anything to work with. We don’t have any copies of Citadel-Keeper communications. No one’s ever been allowed to study them. It may very well be that the Keepers can be communicated with in the same fashion as the mass relays - or that the Citadel itself can - but we don’t have the network identifiers, we don’t have the commands we want. I can’t code that out of nothing, and I don’t even think there’s enough in what we’ve got for the mass relays that I could cobble it together.”

Silence again, all three women thinking. Then Shepard spoke. “That’s not entirely true, Tali,” she said.

“What isn’t?”

“That no one ever studied the Keepers. A salarian did, a few years ago. I helped him out. I can’t remember his name. But he figured out - a bit belatedly, alas - that the Keepers were bio-engineered and responded to a signal through some sort of genetic engineering. The Reapers, of course, which we figured out eventually. I didn’t think much of it. The data he sent is probably still in EDI’s databanks; he sent it to me after I’d been revived post-Alchera.”

Tali, at some point while Shepard was talking, had turned her chair around fully and was staring at her. “You’re serious.”

“Dead serious. I think his name was Cherbon, or Chorban, or something like that…”

“What was it he sent you? Just a report?” She was leaning forward now.

“No, I think there was some sort of attachment with it. I didn’t look too closely; I had a lot of other things to do.”

EDI’s voice came over the comms. “The attachment is indeed still in my databanks, Commander, and it appears to be a complete record of his findings.”

Tali slumped back in her chair and raised her arms to the ceiling. “Oh thank Rannoch for that. Send it my way, EDI, let’s see what I can do with it.”

“The data is being sent now, Tali.”

* * *

Minutes passed, each quieter than the next, apart from the sound of Tali tapping on her omnitool interface. The lines of code scrolling past her face illuminated the cabin erratically, orange and blue flashes flickering on Shepard’s visor.

Shepard’s eyes were still closed. She was watching the little pinpricks, paying attention to her breathing, letting the thoughts invading her brain flow slowly on through. She was tired. Garrus had taken the baby for the day so that she could leave the Normandy and have some functional alone time. Tali and Liara really didn’t need her there and they all knew it. If they’d needed any data they could have asked EDI. She wasn’t there to help - she was just there because it felt like the place she needed to be, and being a mother was exhausting on top of having just woken up from a months-long coma.

She’d finally started eating properly yesterday. Karin had sat her down for her daily checkup, but instead of beginning the mind-numbingly boring routine of pokes, prods, and careful moving of limbs, she had pulled her chair across to the cot that Shepard was sitting on and sat down across from her.

“Shepard,” she’d said, “you’re not well.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, doc,” had been Shepard’s casual reply.

Karin had raised an eyebrow. “Very well,” she’d said, “I will. Your blood pressure is very low; your blood chemistry is imbalanced; your skin grafts are not taking. You haven’t slept a full night of sleep since you woke up, and it’s not just because of the baby. You haven’t been eating properly. You’re suffering from nightmares and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been suffering from flashbacks too and not been telling anybody. Commander, you are _unwell_.”

Shepard had clenched her jaw to keep the unbidden tears from welling into her eyes.

Karin had then reached forward and put her hand on Shepard’s knee. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You have had a long and difficult military career. It is only to be expected that it has taken its toll on you. You are not at fault for this. It is my job as your physician to _help_ you with it.”

Shepard had felt her head bow and her eyes close.

Chakwas had let her stay in silence for several seconds before speaking again, very gently. “Commander, please, may I help you?”

Shepard was jerked back from her reminiscing by a particularly loud beep from Tali’s omnitool, and a sharp expletive from the quarian. The commander shook herself slightly, reoriented herself on the shuttle bench, and wondered how Garrus was getting on with the baby.

Their newly-named baby.

Viatrix.

Voyager.

They’d sat on her bed for hours over the past couple nights, Shepard poring over the baby name book long after Garrus had fallen asleep. It had been their way of killing time between meetings. They each had datapads and would write down names they thought they liked as they went through the lists, and every so often they’d trade pads and read through the other’s list, commenting and nixing names they couldn’t agree on.

It had taken about three days, between all the meetings and the baby crying and needing to be fed, and they needed to eat too, and then there was all the sex to catch up on, and sleep - sleep? what?

But they’d gotten there in the end. Viatrix Ismena. Voyager, and knowledge. A good name for an impossible child. They’d further decided that she would take Garrus’ last name - not out of any patriarchal sense of duty, but because Shepard wasn’t at all sure she wanted to burden their children with a name that would last, in all likelihood, far into the future.

Garrus had pointed out that Vakarian wasn’t exactly an unknown name either, but Shepard had asked him to humour her, and he had accepted.

The kids could change their names if they wanted, anyway. No shame in that. If they wanted her name, they could have it, she thought - but she wasn’t going to make them feel like they had to take it.

She wasn’t even sure _she_ wanted it anymore, but she didn’t have much say in that.

Tali swore again, tripping up Shepard’s train of thought and pulling her away from thoughts of names and little grey babies and back to the problem of the Citadel that didn’t want to talk.

“No luck?” Shepard queried, shifting position again.

“Nothing,” Tali said. “A lot of helpful stuff is here but it’s just not coming together. I’m having trouble parsing a command structure into the way the Keepers parse information. They’re bio-engineered, sure, and you can see some of the similarities between them and the Reaper tech we’ve already worked with, but I feel like I’m missing something, and it’s not working so I guess I am.”

Shepard stood up. “What about you, Liara?”

“This is a little outside my field of expertise,” came the asari’s reply. “I’ve been able to extrapolate some information from Chorban’s data crossreferenced with surveillance reports from the Citadel from my own databanks, but again, not much that seems useful. They act like machines, but they aren’t. There’s an organic component that I just don’t think we have the technology to imitate.”

The commander sighed. “Then I guess we’re out of luck until we figure this out.”

Tali shook her head. “It looks that way.”

“Want to discuss over drinks this evening, Tali?” Liara asked.

“Sure,” Tali replied, “but they had better be strong.” Liara chuckled in response.

“Let’s go home, ladies,” Shepard said, and Tali threw the shuttle into drive.

Shepard settled back onto the bench and closed her eyes again. Her alone time was coming to an end, and all she could think about was the massive, dark, and utterly silent station sitting just outside their shuttle. Why wouldn’t it open? What were they missing? Someone had to know. The Council had ordered the Citadel closed and re-opened on multiple occasions. It had been done before. Why wasn’t it working?

The little pinpricks danced behind her eyelids as she thought through the hours of conversation. Something about it was organic. It made sense for that to be the bottleneck: no race had really perfected bio-engineering to that extent. The Keepers were an utterly unique creation. No one had ever really been able to command or direct them. You just stayed out of their way. But the Citadel had still been opened and closed with direct commands from Citadel Control.

Was this some sort of failsafe? Not just closed, but locked down? Powered down, even?

 _Just fucking open already_ , she thought. _Olly olly oxen free, it’s safe to come out_.

Tali exclaimed sharply from the pilot’s seat. “ _Keelah,_ what on-- Liara, are you seeing this?”

Shepard’s eyes shot open and she was behind Tali’s seat in an instant. “What’s going on?”

“Yes, I see it too,” replied Liara, “and by the looks of all the communications channels lighting up around the system, we’re not the only ones!”

Tali wheeled the shuttle around and brought the Citadel into the main viewing window. “Look!”

She looked.

The Citadel, just outside their window, growing larger as Tali backed the shuttle away, was beginning to light up from the ring to the tips. Slowly but steadily, the black squares were flashing red, blue, yellow, and white, the whole turning into a mosaic of radiance that blurred into a bright white tinged with purple.

“What the hell…” Shepard murmured. “Did you do anything? Did you, Liara?”

“No, nothing,” Liara responded.

“Me neither,” Tali said. “It just started up as I was beginning to accelerate away.”

“Someone must have,” Shepard said. “Find out who.”

 


	36. Hurry Up and Wait

Hurry up and wait.

Shepard was awake again, pacing the length of the empty CIC, Viatrix bouncing slightly on her hip. She’d woken up about 0400 hours, complaining of colic, and Shepard had taken her down to walk it off. Garrus was sound asleep. He’d taken the last couple of outings and she had been awake anyway.

So far, Shepard’s experience of motherhood had been… abridged. She was feeling the aftereffects of labour, and some of the exhaustion of pregnancy, but she knew her experience was incredibly different from most child-bearing people’s, and thus she didn’t really know where to turn.

It didn’t help that her baby was a completely different species. Viatrix didn’t have teeth yet (Garrus said those usually came in somewhere around eight months, a little later than most human children - Shepard wasn’t looking forward to _that_ particular stage of development much), but she certainly had a voice on her, and even though Chakwas had come up with something similar to turian baby formula, thanks to the information Aelianus had given her, Viatrix was still colicky and complained frequently. It made meetings rather amusing, when neither Shep nor Garrus could weasel their way out, and when they couldn’t get a babysitter. (Liara loved taking care of Viatrix, and Traynor particularly enjoyed it too. But, strangely enough, the communications officer of the Normandy and the _Shadow Broker_ didn’t really have a whole lot of free time.)

And this was only day twenty.

Shepard sighed and turned on her heel, walking back down towards the galaxy map. Viatrix had settled down a bit - she liked being walked - but was still grumbling. Shepard could hear her little tummy rumbling and bubbling. Maybe she’d talk to Chakwas about changing the formula a bit.

Hurry up and wait. It’s all her life felt like these days. Wait for Viatrix to be hungry. Wait for Viatrix to fall asleep. Wait for herself to fall asleep. Wait for somebody to call with another problem. Wait for the next meeting. Wait for Garrus to wake up. Wait for Liara and Tali to update her about the Citadel or the relays. Wait for her next checkup with Chakwas.

Wait, wait, wait. More waiting.

The Citadel was still not fully powered up, almost thirty-six hours later. Apparently, the reboot function on an eons-old space station took a while. Tali thought that it was probably only booting up the basic systems, and that once someone managed to get into Citadel Control, they’d be able to manually restart everything else. And then they had to figure out how to move it, too. That was going to be fun. Shepard was glad she didn’t have to do that particular job. Tali seemed to be getting even less sleep than she was, and that was saying something.

Shepard wandered through the boardroom, the communications room, and back into the CIC. The Normandy was still only being staffed by her main crew - the skeleton of squad members and the handful of enlisted personnel and NCOs that had tagged along on the emergency extraction from Earth all those months ago. No night shift, really. You barely needed one, when the ship’s commander was awake at all hours and you had an unshackled AI. Unorthodox, sure; effective, more or less; recommended, definitely not. But no one was really looking too closely, even ten months after the end of the war.

She couldn’t believe it had been that long. Granted, she’d only been awake for about three weeks of it, and so the battle of London seemed like only yesterday, but then so did Akuze, and so did Alchera, and so did the Collector Base, so she wasn’t really in a position to judge.

In any case, it was beyond time they all got out of the system. Miranda had sent her a message, earlier that day, with some barely-audible transmissions she’d snagged from the shortwave networks on Earth. You couldn’t get much out of them, but Miranda had gotten enough to be worried, and it took a lot to worry Miranda. From the looks of them, someone wanted to start a civil war, or two, or three, and that was bad news. Not entirely surprising news, granted, as post-war years are always fragile and easily upended, but disappointing news all the same if it turned out to be true.

Shepard wondered if they were likely to hear similar rumblings through the krogan and turian populations as well. Nothing like a galactic war to show you the problems with your chosen governmental systems. Or completely destroy them, in the case of Earth. Humanity was only barely scraping along right now, with the remnants of the Alliance making sure that everyone got food and water. It wasn’t exactly martial law, but it wasn’t _not_. Shepard figured another two months at most before people started to feel safe enough to be frustrated. And when everything’s broken already, what does it matter if you get angry? She knew the feeling.

Viatrix whined. Shepard switched shoulders and hummed tunelessly to her. She calmed down. Shepard sighed and yawned. Nearly 0500 hours now. They had a meeting with the mass relay reactivation fleet at 0900. She’d have to wheedle some sort of stim out of Karin or she was going to fall asleep at the boardroom table.

The fleet was scheduled to leave two days from now. The Normandy would be picking Grunt, Wrex, and Javik up from their various spots all over the globe: they’d been helping with rebuilding efforts and the Alliance had shipped them wherever they needed massive things moved. Shepard was honestly looking forward to seeing them more than she was looking forward to getting out of the system. She and Garrus had decided ages ago that Wrex would be godfather to any child they ended up with, and she couldn’t wait to tell him. Secretly she thought he might get a little teary. Grunt would have a sister of sorts, too. That would be fun. Wrex would make a fantastic addition to the babysitter crew. She might actually get some sleep on the way to Tuchanka, where they’d be dropping both krogan off. She was hoping to see Bakara, too, before they left.

Turn on her heel behind Joker’s chair, back towards the main room. Watch the little lights flash. Listen to her breathing, to Viatrix’s breathing, to the subtle hum of the ship. There was just enough ambient noise on the main deck to drown out the rustling in the back of her mind.

Why _had_ the Citadel started up? Was it on some sort of a time delay? After Reapers, wait for a while, then start yourself up again for the next cycle? It made sense, she supposed. But she couldn’t shake off what Tali had said. Something _biological_. Something _organic_. Strange, for Reaper technology, to need something organic. But then, the Reapers probably hadn’t bothered messing with the Keepers for a very, _very_ long time. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Held true for apocalyptic-scale machines of destruction too, apparently. So if they hadn’t had to change the Keepers, and thus the Keepers had never changed, or hadn’t changed in a very long time, and if any attempt to tamper with the Keepers - and therefore learn about Reaper bio-engineering - resulted in a puddle of Keeper goo … well, it was no wonder that nobody could talk to them. Their masters were dead.

But even dead gods can dream, as they learned in orbit around Mnemosyne. And there were still Reaper derelicts floating around everywhere in the Sol system. Many of them had been towed into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but no one was quite sure what to do with them.

What if the Reapers weren’t dead?

Shepard closed her eyes, held Viatrix a little tighter. She didn’t really remember a lot of what had happened after she’d reached the beam to the Citadel. She remembered lights, and a lot of blood, and a lot of pain. She remembered arguing herself hoarse but she couldn’t remember who she had been arguing with, or what they had been arguing about. She remembered the feeling of desolation and hopelessness, replaced by resignation and acceptance. She remembered that she had made an impossible choice. She remembered that she had known she was going to die.

It didn’t make sense to her, that she was standing here now, in her ship, holding her daughter. It didn’t make sense that she was alive, that any of them were alive. She couldn’t remember what she had done. By rights, she should have been dead. She couldn’t remember if she had thought everyone else should be dead, too.

She couldn’t remember, and it drove her mad.

Hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait...

 


	37. The Klixen and the Maws

The sound of a krogan jumping out of a shuttle onto hard metal plating was unmistakable. Two in close succession made everyone’s knees tremble in sympathy as the vibrations rippled through the floor.

“ _Shepard!_ ” shouted Wrex, striding forward as Steve settled the shuttle down onto the deck. “You should have _called!_ ”

Shepard chuckled, bouncing Viatrix on her shoulder. “I was a little busy being dead, Wrex.”

“Ah, bullshit.” He towered over her by a good two feet, his armour burned and even more battle-scarred than it was before, one significantly large chunk taken out of the left side of his hump armour, just beside his face - it looked oddly like a rocket blast. “Nice to see you. Who’s the whelp? Vakarian have a kid while you were out?”

Garrus walked up to Shepard and Wrex, wiping his hands on a rag, having been finishing a thorough clean of the Normandy’s stored armaments. “Actually, Wrex, you’re right on the money.”

Wrex looked at him, squinted, and looked back at Shepard, who was grinning. “Fill me in here, Shepard.”

Shepard turned Viatrix around to show her tiny face to the massive krogan. “Say hello to your god-daughter.” Viatrix squirmed, yawned, and blinked blearily at the scarred face in front of her.

Wrex looked down at the little turian, cocked his head to one side, then cracked a smile. “You’re serious.”

Garrus beamed. “Couldn’t be more so.”

Wrex held out his arms; Shepard passed Viatrix over. Wrex cradled her gently, the delicacy of the motion a striking contrast with his typical demeanour. He was silent for a moment, looking at the baby in his arms, and when he spoke next there was a little more gravel in his voice. “What is she, three weeks?”

“Two and a half,” Shepard said softly, “or thereabouts.”

Grunt had joined the group at some point during the conversation, coming up at Wrex’s elbow. “So you’ve got a kid?”

She nodded. “Yup.”

The younger krogan grunted, pondering the baby turian in Wrex’s arms. “Huh. That’s a pretty impressive feat, even for you, Battlemaster.”

Shepard laughed. “Thanks, Grunt.”

Wrex spoke, still gazing at the baby. “...Where’d you find a turian whelp in the Sol system?

“That’s a hell of a long story,” Garrus replied.

“You’d better be telling me this story over drinks before we leave the system.”

The turian chuckled. “There’s a bottle of ryncol left from the last time you were on board.”

“Excellent,” Wrex rumbled. Viatrix wiggled and cooed. Wrex laughed, the deep sound setting her squirming again. “You like that, do you? What’s your name?”

“Viatrix,” Shepard offered.

Wrex humphed. “Good enough name for a turian. She’ll be strong. Wiry, too. She looks healthy.”

Grunt broke in. “What else would you expect from Battlemaster Shepard? Any child of hers will be the strongest of them all.”

Wrex rolled his eyes and shifted Viatrix to lean against his shoulder, bouncing her slightly, setting her giggling. “Ah fuck, you don’t get it, you haven’t _had_ the klixen and the maws speech…”

* * *

The first people inside the newly-restarted Citadel described it later as eerie, melancholy, and ultimately depressing. In many places, only the emergency lighting had come on, bathing much of the station in a pale purple glow. There were no bodies anywhere to be seen, apart from the stationary Keepers, who were standing, evenly spaced, along the entirety of the Presidium and through most of the Wards. The silent sentinels did not so much as move a muscle as the asari-turian joint spec-ops team worked their way from their docking bay to Citadel Control.

Twelve hours after that first reconnaissance mission into the nigh-dormant Citadel, the mass relay reactivation fleet was scheduled to depart. The final tweaks on each ship were being completed; the remaining ships amassed behind them, ready to go twelve hours later.

It felt like everyone in the system was holding their breath. Ten months of emergency ration hell. Ten months of tending to the wounded with barely enough supplies to go around. Ten months of building field hospitals and lean-to shelters on the ravaged battlefields of Earth. Ten long, long months.

All about to end. Unless it all went to hell. But it couldn’t go much further to hell than it already had, so everyone just tiredly crossed their fingers and wearily held their breath.

The spec-ops team signaled back the all-clear. Basic life-support and whatever ancient, arcane power generation systems the Citadel had deep in its core had restarted, but the Keepers remained dormant. Expert opinion held they were waiting for a further stage of reactivation. Based on the data the team gathered from Citadel Control, a complete and total shutdown had not occurred in … eons.

No one was quite sure what to do. Anyone who had been on board the Citadel when the Reapers had moved it before the Battle for Earth was, to put it kindly, not present. In fact, it was quite the mystery as to where they had all gone. The total death toll was barely conceivable, and the missing-persons list would likely grow by billions by the end of the reckoning, but it was certain that the Citadel had been home to at least a dozen million people - considerably more, counting refugees, and it wasn’t at all clear how many had managed to escape.

So the spec-ops team spent several hours sitting in Citadel Control, scrolling through technical manuals put together by generations upon generations of asari, and meanwhile, the amassed fleets of the galaxy prepared to leave, streaming out in formation towards the Charon relay while the relay-reactivation fleet waited quietly, two systems over, in the Exodus Cluster.

The Normandy was first in line, and Tali was wearing holes in the floor of the cockpit.

“Calm down,” Joker said, craning his head to look over his shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“We don’t know that,” she shot back. “Any of these upgrades could feasibly destroy a ship if it was installed incorrectly. In seconds we could lose some of the best remaining ships in the galaxy. And it would be _my fault. All my fault._ ”

Joker looked back at his screen, eyes widening for a second before he laid his hands comfortably over the controls. “Well geez, when you put it that way… I’m glad we’re goin’ first. And I’m glad we’ve done this before. At least we won’t know until nobody follows us through, right? And it’s not like we haven’t spent our fair share of time completely alone in the galaxy. I mean we won’t really be equipped for repopulating the whole universe but, y’know, could be some fun last days.”

Tali aimed a sharp kick at the back of his chair. “Oh, shut up. You’re terrible.”

“Hey, just tryin’ to lighten the mood a little.”

Shepard came up behind them, Viatrix on her shoulder. “Just got the go-ahead from the councillors. Everyone’s in place, we’re ready to roll. On my mark, Joker.”

Tali hid her face in her hands. Joker took a deep breath. “Aye aye, Commander, ready when you are.”

Shepard ran her tongue over her teeth, inhaled slowly, and exhaled. “Key the comm.” Joker pressed a control. “Shepard to all ships: Broadcast general reactivation code in three-second bursts on emergency frequency one. Engage mass relay to the Serpent Nebula. And hold onto your hats, folks.”

Joker released the comm control, tapped in the requisite commands, and then grabbed his cap with one hand.

The relay ahead of them pulsed a bright white as they approached it, and then obscured their screen with radiance as they flew into the monolithic, gyroscopic machine. They all felt the familiar tug on their stomachs, like the jolt at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and felt their knees go slightly weak in response - and then the screen was filled with nebulous purple fog, and they saw the handful of ships that had been following them slip into existence alongside them, and Joker keyed the screen to show the aft camera, and the Serpent Nebula relay was sparking and shimmering with energy. One more down, forty-three-ish more to go.

Shepard stepped forward, reached down and activated the comms herself. “Shepard to all ships,” she said, “status report.”

“ _Cultrum_ reporting,” came a brusque female turian voice, “all clear. Some electrical failures, but nothing we can’t fix.”

A deep male quarian voice came in next. “ _Aza’Riyel_ here,” it said, “all systems are go.”

“ _Marenhal_ here,” a bright salarian counter-tenor continued, “some minor engine overheating due to power fluctuations, but we’ve pinpointed the source and are fixing it post-haste.”

Finally, a light soprano of an asari chimed in. “ _Sarene_ reporting all clear. No major issues.”

“Excellent,” Shepard responded. “Check in with me in twenty minutes or less with a damage report. We’ll take it from there. Normandy out.”

Tali slumped back into the navigator’s chair in relief. “Keelah,” she breathed, “it worked. Remote activation worked, and we weren’t spat out into some uncharted system somewhere.”

“The nebula looks weird without the Citadel there,” Joker mused. “Real empty.”

Shepard nodded. Viatrix bubbled happily, mesmerized by the swirling purples and blues shimmering in the Normandy’s viewports.


	38. Slow and Steady

Shepard sat, silently, leaning up against her headboard. Garrus and Viatrix were nestled together beside her, sleeping soundly.

Not so lucky, the Commander was. Nightmares again. Nightmares as always. Nightmares eternally.

She rolled her eyes and rubbed her hands over her face. _That_ was a little overdramatic, she thought. But they certainly didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

PTSD, Karin had said. Not a surprise. She’d wondered for years. Akuze had been traumatic enough. Pile the last few years on top of that and it really was a wonder she’d been able to hold herself together this long.

They were still in the Serpent Nebula, waiting for the _Cultrum_ to finish their repairs, which had proven more extensive than originally thought. Garrus had kicked himself for a good hour when they’d delivered the report - he felt responsible, as the highest-ranking turian in the little fleet.

Shepard was restless, waiting here, doing nothing. The Normandy was fine, their rations were fine, there was nothing to do. Tali and Liara had been cataloguing communications satellites that looked to be in good repair - they would pass the information along to the appropriate parties once that was possible, and save them all a step. Garrus had spent a couple hours out in the shuttle, vaporizing and culling smaller bits of debris. Kaidan and James had gone through all the weaponry again, repairing the pieces Garrus had noted. Chakwas had reorganized the sick bay.

Shepard had nothing to do. Well, apart from keep Viatrix happy, well-fed, and clean. And make sure she slept. Shepard had taken to stealing catnaps while Viatrix napped, because the baby frequently got her out of the more inane meetings and she only slept for about twenty minutes at a time, anyway.

As a result, Shepard was wide awake and it was 0230.

She slipped out of bed and out of her quarters, her dark grey tank top and shorts still rather loose on her frame. Chakwas had been giving her nutritional supplements, but you didn’t just bounce back from a nine-month coma. She padded, bare-foot, to the elevator, and pressed the button for the shuttle bay. She leaned her head against the cool metal of the door as the elevator sank into the bowels of the ship.

She stepped out, rolled her neck and shoulder, and headed for Vega’s mini-gym. She wrapped her hands, pulled out a punching bag and settled into a fighting stance, listening to the quiet hum of her ship and the hiss of the air circulation. She boxed with the bag lightly, feeling out the stiffness in her joints and the looseness of her muscles. She was soon out of breath, and leaned back against the crates to rest.

She sighed softly. She’d told Garrus she thought it would take her a few months before she could go back to active duty. She’d noticed how he’d held his mandibles deliberately loose when he answered her, and how he’d answered in as neutral a tone as possible, and how his answer had been a complete non-answer. She’d also noticed that Karin wasn’t treating her on any sort of timetable that could be considered accelerated - nowhere near the regimen that she’d been on during the war, or even during her stint with Cerberus. Everyone around her - Hackett and Anderson included - was advising her to take it “slow and steady”.

She hated slow and steady. She saw the tactical advantage in it, certainly. But it wasn’t her style and never had been. There was a huge difference between playing chess slowly, and playing wisely - and though she was still very young by the typical standards of human experience, she’d been through a hell of a lot, and tactics were her strong suit.

At first she had thought the advice had been directed at her new status as mother - which made sense. A baby was a huge change, physically and mentally, for anyone. It made sense to feel things out a little more, be a little more cautious. But she had eventually realized that no one doubted her ability to organize her life with an extra person in it - and no one doubted her abilities as a mother. Which was strange, because she felt like she was doubting every second of it.

No, they were _worried_ about her.

Shepard hadn’t seen a mirror until she’d boarded the Normandy. She hadn’t realized until then just how thin and gaunt she looked - how near to death she looked. That was one thing to be said for Miranda: Shepard had looked a hell of a lot better waking up after she had _actually_ died than after she _hadn’t._

She’d also _felt_ a lot better. She’d been able to get up and run around and _fight_. There had been some minor pulling of stitches, and she’d needed to be patched up a bit, but on the whole she’d been fine. No lasting damage, just a few tsks from Karin. But this? After she, Garrus, and Viatrix had fled the _Parigoria_ , Karin had nearly ordered Shepard to bed - and Shepard would almost have agreed with her. While her adrenaline had been high, she’d felt fine, if a little more sluggish than usual - which, again, no surprise, you lose muscle memory after nine months of sleep - but afterwards, she’d been incredibly short of breath, her vision had blurred, her heart had raced.

In the past couple weeks, she’d started to do laps whenever she had a few minutes to herself - laps, or a few stomach crunches, or a little bit of target practice. Her guns were _heavy_ now. _Too_ heavy, some of them. She had just about cried when she had tried to lift her Widow and had actually dropped it, her arms trembling with exertion. But she kept trying. She still hadn’t managed the Widow, but she could lift her old Lancer, the Phalanx wasn’t too bad, and the Locust was almost easy.

No wonder Garrus had avoided a real answer when she’d talked about returning to active duty. Between the extensive physical inability and the raging PTSD symptoms, it felt like she wouldn’t be battle-ready until Viatrix moved out.

She sighed heavily, pushed herself off the crate, and began boxing with the punching bag again. It was making her tired, which was her intent, and it made her feel a little more like herself. She fell into a rhythm and zoned out, stopping only when the sound of heavy footfalls trying to be quiet made her look up.

“Shepard,” rumbled Wrex, who was approaching from the elevator. “Can’t sleep?”

Shepard pulled back from the punching bag and nodded. “You got me.”

“Me neither,” Wrex replied, coming up beside her and wrapping his own hands. He wasn’t wearing his full armour - just a set of underarmour, which left his arms bare but covered his hump, his torso, and down to just above his knees.

Shepard rolled her shoulders and pulled a tank top strap back up from where it had fallen on her upper arm. “I’ve never seen you without your armour before, Wrex.”

Wrex tucked the ends of his straps in and settled into his own half-crouch stance, across from her, beckoning her out. “Krogan don’t usually take the stuff off. But you gotta clean it sometime.”

Shepard followed him out into the open center of the bay and fell back into her stance. “I guess it must get pretty rank in there.”

They began strafing around each other, finding a rhythm, watching each other’s footfalls, the bob of their heads. “Yup,” Wrex replied. “Worse than an Alliance ship after a long haul mission.” He threw a hook and Shepard dodged it neatly.

The Commander chuckled. “That’s impressive.” She aimed a jab at his jaw; he swerved to avoid it. “The armour hides a lot: you’re craggier than a mountain range.”

The massive krogan took another swing, forcing Shepard to duck, roll, and come back up on his other side. “Well I have got several hundred years on you, Shepard.”

The thin human bounced on the balls of her feet and shrugged. “True enough. So why’d you come down here, anyway?”

They began to circle again. Wrex rolled his shoulders back and smacked his hands together. “Same as you. Couldn’t sleep. Don’t sleep much anyway. Eventually you do enough of it and you’ve got better things to do.”

Shepard cracked her neck and shifted her weight forward a little. “Tell me about it.” She danced around her next thought for a couple of steps before speaking again. “Wrex… do krogan ever get… do you ever have battle nightmares? Flashbacks?”

Wrex took a few steps of his own before answering, his gaze level and unreadable. “...Yeah. Some of us do. Most of us are too stupid to care, or die too soon. But those of us who have been around long enough… yeah. We’re pretty tight-lipped about it, though. Why? Something bothering you?”

He threw a punch; Shepard blocked it with her forearm and was momentarily taken aback by how lightly he’d thrown it. “Uh… yeah. A lot of things are bothering me, actually.” She swung her own fist towards him and he blocked it with his arm. “Not the least of which is how pathetic I am these days.”

A low rumbling chuckle vibrated the metal under her feet. “Shepard,” the krogan said, “you just spent nine months in a Reaper cocoon while pregnant. Even I can’t be too hard on you after that.” He aimed a lazy right hook at her head and she batted it away.

“I know,” she replied, with an unimpressed grimace, “but I still feel like shit. I’m a _soldier_ , Wrex. I can’t even fucking lift my _guns_.” She ducked around him and aimed a kick high, at his shoulder; he pivoted back, caught her ankle, and swung her over into a full cartwheel; she landed on her feet, sank into a crouch to release the energy, and came back up with a bounce. “This is the most energetic I’ve felt since I woke up.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the big krogan replied with a smile. “You spar with yourself too much and you get too far into your head. You gotta work _with_ somebody. That way you can complain _and_ fight.” He shifted his weight back and forth, beckoning her forward. “C’mon, Shepard. I can take anything you can dish out, and I could last year, too, so don’t you dare think I’m pitying you. You’re one of the finest soldiers I’ve ever known. You’ll come back from this and you’ll kick the ass of whatever decides to fuck us over next.”

Shepard couldn’t help but laugh, standing up and putting her hand on her hip, taking a couple deep breaths. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Wrex.”

Wrex grinned. “You’d be punching a bag and brooding over your nightmares. Now fight me, Shepard, get on with it.”

 


	39. No In-Between

“Garrus.”

The way she said it, leaning her forehead against the glowing blue of the fish tank, was more of a breath than a word.  She wasn’t even sure if she actually wanted him to wake up.  Viatrix was sleeping.  She’d had a thorough bout with Wrex, and had slipped through the shower in the crew washroom before coming up.  No sense waking them.   She hadn’t quite managed to get to her bed: a fish had twitched and had caught her eye, and she realized she’d been staring at them move for twenty minutes about thirty seconds ago.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, fogging up the transparent steel.  Her heart skipped a beat as a long claw slid across her abdomen, but then her brain caught up and registered Garrus’ smell and heat, and she relaxed.  Holding her gently, he rested his head on top of hers, and she felt a mandible flutter her hair.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, and it felt like the world cracked.

* * *

So far, so good.  Relay activation was going without a hitch.  And, as a bonus, each ship was helping to reactivate what long-range communications networks it could while it branched out through the galaxy.  This meant that instead of hearing absolutely nothing for days at a time, Shepard got relatively regular updates from the rest of the reactivation fleet.  The Normandy had stayed in the Serpent Nebula for an extra day, receiving and coordinating information from the other ships, sending updates back to the Sol system, troubleshooting glitches in the system.  Tali, once again, was busier than Shepard.

After that extra day, the go-ahead was given for the rest of the fleets surrounding Earth to move out and head home.  The Normandy left for Tuchanka soon after that.  Shepard was a little disappointed she didn’t get to see the massive influx of ships back to the ‘center of the galaxy’, as it were, but she knew there would be impressive displays of victorious galactic patriotism later (when people weren’t starving, and desperate to know if loved ones were still alive, and once everyone had a roof over their head) … and really, she thought, it was a bit odd of her to want to see the fruits of her labours - but then - well - they’d beaten the Reapers.  That deserved a celebration, even by her exacting standards.

And for _God’s sake_ did she ever want to say “I told you so” to the Council.  But she thought she might well take that one to the grave.  … for a third time.  Sort of.

Tuchanka loomed in the front viewscreen of her ship; it also floated in the center of the CNC imaging displays.  The dusty orange planet was spun calmly, while the everpresent debris of space stations and ships floated serenely in orbit; Tuchanka had not been spared any more than any other planet in the galaxy had been, but Shepard wondered how much difference the krogan really would have noticed.

Then again, she _had_ cured the genophage before everything _really_ went to hell.  So maybe things were better.  Or maybe they were worse!  She wasn’t sure.  If she was being honest with herself, the person she really wanted to ask wasn’t available for comment.

Her throat tightened, and she swallowed, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.  Without opening her eyes, she keyed the intercom button on her console.

“Ground team, prepare for descent.  We leave in five.”

_Would have liked to run tests on the seashells._

* * *

“All we want is Tuchanka.”

Shepard ground her elbow into her thigh, her chin resting on her fist, staring at Bakara.  The krogan matriarch was sitting in Wrex’s old stone chair, cradling Viatrix in one arm and occasionally bouncing her on her knee.  Bakara made a good argument.  The krogan needed to rebuild, just like everyone else in the galaxy did.  Unfortunately, they had next to nothing left - even less than any of the other races did, arguably, though Shepard didn’t know that for sure - and with the genophage cured, there was only so much Bakara (and Wrex) could do to keep the antsy, frustrated, _angry_ krogan on Tuchanka and not killing each other.

So, as Bakara had said, they wanted Tuchanka.  They wanted help to re-terraform it and make it more viable, and then they’d continue rebuilding.  A test case, as it were.  And if they could handle Tuchanka, then - and only then - would the door open to possibly colonizing other worlds.

Bakara and Wrex weren’t stupid.  They knew perfectly well that now was not the time to ask the Council for a bunch of new planets.  They also knew their own people very well - and the biggest thing they knew about their fellow krogan was that they were _impatient_ … and bitter.  So they wanted to channel that frustrated energy into something constructive.  A lot of the old guard had died off in the war, but they weren’t all gone - and a lot of young promising krogan had died, too.  But they were hopeful, in the gruff krogan way, that enough had changed - both on Tuchanka and galaxy-wide - that things might change.

“I can’t promise what the Council will say, Bakara.  You know that.”  Shepard bounced her knee up and down, biting the corner of her lip in frustrated thought.  She knew they were right.  She liked the idea.  She was nervous about it, but that was reasonable, and it wasn’t the biggest risk she’d ever taken.  But … this wasn’t her responsibility.  She didn’t want to promise something she couldn’t deliver.

Ha.  That hadn’t stopped her before.

“Shepard,” Bakara rumbled, leaning forward, tiny turian baby dwarfed against her cowl, “right now, there _is no_ government.  There hasn’t been for months.  I’ve been doing what I can, and I’m making progress.  But we need words, and then we need more than words.  Otherwise this planet will blow up in the galaxy’s face again.”

Shepard sighed and looked at the sky, which - maybe she was imagining things - seemed less dusty than it did before.  “I know.”

Viatrix burped, then mumbled something which buzzed and fluttered in Shepard’s ears.  Bakara glanced down at the infant, then settled back into the rocky throne.  “If anyone can convince the rest of the galaxy to give us krogan a hand up, it’ll be you.  You managed to get us cured.”

“Yeah.”  

“Tuchanka,” Bakara repeated.  “Let us start with Tuchanka.  I know the salarians have terraforming capsules hidden away on Sur’Kesh.  Even one or two of those would give us one hell of a head start.  And I know everyone else needs them too, but not everyone else has a herd of rapidly growing angry krogan behind the corner.”

Shepard looked down again, caught Bakara’s gaze.  “You know that if this doesn’t work, it could mean complete destruction for the krogan.”

Bakara stared back, implacable.  “And you know that there’s no way you can pull something like the genophage twice.  You’ll have to bombard us from orbit.”  She stood, cradling the baby carefully, and paced forward, past Shepard.  Shepard turned to look at her, but the krogan wasn’t looking back - Bakara was staring at the orangey-brown sky, much like she had been.  When next she spoke, Bakara was quiet, shades of bittersweet emotions colouring her voice.  “We either win it all or we lose it all, Shepard.  There isn’t any in-between this time.”


	40. White Picket Fences

The QEC link wasn’t great.  Anderson’s hologram flickered with static, and once in a while a word didn’t quite make it through, but it was the best solid connection they’d been able to make, and Shepard was taking full advantage of it.

“The krogan want Tuchanka.”

“They’ve already got it.”

“No, they want to terraform it.  Start again.  Prove to the Council that they’ve changed.

“I assume you told them you can’t promise anything.”

“First thing I said, sir.  But Bakara would beat anyone I know at chess, Mordin included.  She knows that we know that things will get awfully messy, awfully fast, if this doesn’t go through.”

“And we know that she knows that we can’t guarantee it.  No one can.”

“Yes.  But she’s right: what choice do they have?”

“Mm.  Anything else?”

“I want _coffee_.”

“Get in line, soldier.  Have you heard anything from the team headed to Rannoch?”

“No, sir.  A couple blips but not enough of a connection to receive a full message.  All on regular communication frequencies, though, no emergencies as far as we can tell.”

“No news is good news.  Head out in that direction next.”

“Aye, sir.  What’s happening with the Council?”

“Good question.  Tevos seems to be avoiding the subject of Thessia like it’s poisoned.  Can’t blame her.  Sparatus is yanking at the bit to get back to Palaven - again, no surprise.  And I’ve barely seen Valern: he’s cancelled more than half of our meetings.  I suspect he’s buried himself in as much work as he can find.  Did you know he used to be STG?”

“Garrus did mention something to that effect, though I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“It’s true.  Apparently he was rather decorated.  Must have been a short career.  Anyway.  None of them seem particularly keen on restarting the whole issue of galactic governance.”

“Someone’s got to start making decisions.”

“Never thought I’d hear you advocating for more Council authority, Shepard.”

This made her pause.  She looked away for a moment, then back at Anderson.  “I’m as surprised as you, sir.  But my point remains.  Whether or not I personally _liked_ the Council doesn’t change the fact that they _were_ the backbone of this mess.  If the krogan are getting antsy, the rest of the galaxy isn’t far behind.”

Anderson nodded.  “No, you’re right.  I’ll put pressure on the science corps to really work on moving the Citadel.  That should kickstart the process - change of scenery, you know.”

Shepard rolled her right shoulder.  “Aye sir.  Anything else?”

He shook his head.  “Report once you hit Rannoch.”

She nodded.  “Yes sir.  Say hello to Kahlee for me.”

Anderson smiled.  “Only if you give Viatrix a hug from me.”

“Deal.”

* * *

Rannoch spun beneath their feet, a deceptively blue and green sphere surrounded by thousands of silent geth stations.  The voyage had been largely uneventful: these relays had already been reactivated.  Apart from a tense half-hour standoff with a small freighter full of delirious human and asari scientists who attempted to hold Tali ransom when she zipped over in a shuttle to check on the lifesigns, everything went quite smoothly.  (They’d pinged the nearest supply ship and gotten the survivors to an inhabited system with no one the worse for wear.  Tali treated them to a few new curses, however, which Garrus had sneakily added to his growing list.)

Now, EDI was methodically pinging each and every geth space station floating around the planet, while Shepard, Tali, and Garrus sat in a shuttle slowly gliding down to the surface.  Today’s agenda: a full Admiralty Board meeting, a celebratory dinner (Shepard had been assured she would be provided with _some_ thing to eat … she wasn’t holding her breath), and an evening of quarian music.  

“Why the dinner and dancing?” Garrus queried, flicking the controls to bring the shuttle into a landing pattern.  

“Tradition,” Tali replied.  “We haven’t really had the time or resources to do it lately - even when you came to my hearing - but anyone who has to sit through an Admiralty meeting usually wants a good meal and several good drinks afterward.  Especially if they’re from off planet.”

“So they weren’t kidding when they said clear a whole day,” Garrus grumbled.  “I miss the turian way of holding meetings.  At least our arguments are quick and logical.”

Tali snorted.  “Give me a break, Garrus.  I overheard you arguing with the primarch enough times to know that _that’s_ a load of shit.”

“No, no,” he said, waving his hand, “those were _personal_ conversations, not meetings.  Personal arguments take forever!  Meetings are short and to the point.”

“You still go to the bar afterward,” Shepard chimed in.

“That’s true,” said Garrus.  “We just have the good sense to make the meeting as short as possible so we can get to the drinking that much quicker.”  Shepard laughed, Tali shook her head.  The comms panel buzzed.  Garrus tapped the control.  “Normandy shuttle here.”

“This is Rannoch Alpha,” a male quarian voice responded.  “Normandy shuttle, you are clear to land.”

“Much obliged, Rannoch Alpha,” Garrus responded.  “Down shortly.”

“Aye aye,” the quarian answered, and the channel closed.  Garrus banked the shuttle into a steeper descent, then leveled out, hit the reverse thrusters, and settled them onto the pad gently.

Shepard palmed the door control, and it slid open to reveal reddish-orange cliffs on the horizon.  She blinked once, twice, the heat simmering in the air, making her vision waver--

_a giant ship, truly titanic, looming over her_

_its red eye searching, shifting, seeking_

_what is a flea to a god_

_she feels the deep pull within her, the ache, the sadness, the void_

_step forward, it says, step into the light_

_come_

**_be_ **

_the light flashes, she tucks and rolls, bangs her shoulder hard on the cliffside_

\--and she saw Garrus’ concerned face at a very odd angle.  She blinked again, trying to figure out what had happened, and she stuttered.  “I-- we’re-- on Rannoch, I was-- _a Reaper_ , _Garrus, go, **go** , _I have to--”

Garrus’ mandibles tightened and his brow plates shifted down.  “Shepard, there aren’t any Reapers here.”

She pushed at him, realized she was on the floor of a shuttle, and tried to get up to her feet.  “No, it’s here, I have to fight it, calibrate the fleet, distract it, Garrus why are you here, it’ll destroy everything, why are you--”

He held her shoulders tight.  “Shepard.  The war is over.  Look at me.  The Reaper you fought on Rannoch is dead.  We beat it.”

She stilled, and kept blinking, memories falling back into place.  “I … what?”

His left mandible flicked out and back in, and he hummed deeply.  “Are you sure you’re okay to do this meeting?  Should we call Doctor Chakwas?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.  “No, I … I’m fine.  I’m fine.  It was just … a flashback.  Sorry.  Don’t call Chakwas.”  She opened her eyes and looked up at him with a tired smile.  “Besides, I know you don’t want to miss the dinner and dancing.”

He chuckled softly, but the deep humming didn’t stop.  “Alright.  You _tell me_ if anything else happens, okay?”

“Y- … yeah.  I will.”  She got to her knees, then to her feet, Garrus giving her a hand up.  

Tali, who Shepard now saw had been standing nervously by the controls, ready to call the Normandy, exhaled deeply and came over to the other two, putting a hand on Shepard’s shoulder briefly before hopping out of the shuttle.

* * *

The Admiralty Board meeting had gone almost exactly as Shepard had expected it to.  Everyone had argued in circles around the basic question: what to do with the geth?  Should they attempt to start them up again?  If not, where to put them?  Recycling them seemed … disrespectful.  If they were successfully woken, how would they integrate the two societies into life on Rannoch?  Relations had seemed promising after Legion’s self-sacrifice, but there had still been rogue geth, and it could get messy awfully fast.  (Shepard suspected this was going to be a recurring theme.)

Shepard was nursing a drink while perched on a makeshift bar stool.  Tali was dancing; Garrus was in a heated conversation with Han’Gerrel about the quality of, as far as Shepard could tell, quarian whiskey as a propellant.  Her omnitool had already buzzed several times through the evening: mostly small status updates from Liara, who was babysitting Viatrix today.  Liara adored the little turian and was quite happy to tote her around in a sling while working on whatever particularly sensitive information she happened to be focusing on that day.  Liara’s updates to Shepard usually consisted of cute pictures of Viatrix and/or Liara, mostly taken by Glyph, as well as short notes about feeding schedule and naps.  

She decided she needed a walk, some fresh air.  It was nice to be planetside and not actively fighting a war, after all.  She mimed “taking a walk” to Garrus, who looked up questioningly as she passed, and he nodded and returned to his conversation with Han.  Shepard exited the newly-fabricated structure - part of the complex the quarians had been adding to since they arrived, which seemed to be an old government building of some sort - and strolled into the courtyard, into the dusky rays of the sunset.  The courtyard had long since returned to wilderness, having been abandoned over three hundred years ago, but the retaining walls remained more or less intact, and the vegetation had only grown in the interim.  

She walked up to a wall which overlooked a cliff, and, leaning on the brickwork, stared up into the sky.  She’d had enough to drink that she was slightly buzzed - which meant she’d had quite a lot - and she took the opportunity to just … look at the stars.  So different here than back home; so different here than the streaks flying past her window.  She hadn’t had a real chance to stargaze in years.  She pulled up a starmap on her omnitool, and attempted to match the map to the sky above her.  She found the rough locations of Sol, Trebia, and Parnitha; she wondered how many dead Reapers were floating aimlessly in space between her and her friends’ homes; she wondered if they were actually dead.

Her mind turned to the problem of the Citadel, still stuck in the Sol system.  The Reapers had moved it from the Serpent Nebula; of course, no one knew how.  The Citadel was not exactly a structure you could simply … tow.

She sat down with her back against the bricks, staring up at the sky.  No one had figured out yet why the Citadel had started up; never having had to move it before, there were no notes in the thousands of pages of technical manuals the asari had accumulated over the millennia.  In truth, they hadn’t even known it _could_ move.

Shepard let her focus drift off the stars, calling back into her memory.  Sovereign’s ships had used the Citadel itself as a mass relay.  Reapers, as far as anyone could tell, had just glided along incessantly and inexorably.  But they had created the mass relays, hadn’t they?  And they’d just … _shown up_ in the Sol system.  No one had seen them coming, and it hadn’t been because no one was looking. 

Could a mass relay move itself?  Shepard couldn’t even begin to wrap her brain around the idea.  She only knew the basics of how mass relays worked – it had never really been a priority.  She sent a message to Liara – _can mass relays move themselves?_ – and returned her gaze to the sky.  After a minute, her omnitool beeped, and she read the reply – _I don’t know, I’ll send the question along, also Viatrix is sleeping isn’t she cute? –_ along with the picture. 

Shepard smiled at the little snapshot of Viatrix, cuddled up against Liara’s chest in her sling, one hand splayed over her right mandible.  She felt a brief pang of emotion, the strange cross between pain and joy that she often felt when she looked at the tiny turian.  The infant almost didn’t feel real to Shepard. 

She shook her head, clambered to her feet, and went back inside.  Time to rejoin the party.  She spent enough time in introspection lately and some relaxation would probably do her good.  At the very least, it might keep Karin off her back for a day or two.

* * *

Garrus lay awake, Shepard’s sleeping form nestled against his side.  They’d decided to stay the night on Rannoch: Liara was quite content to keep Viatrix overnight, and had in fact encouraged them both to stay planetside.  Shepard had grumbled, of course, bothered that she wouldn’t know what was going on, that she needed to be with her ship and her crew, but Garrus and Liara had talked her down: they weren’t going anywhere, the Normandy was safe as houses, a night in a place that didn’t have constant noise might well be _good_ for Shepard, Viatrix would be _fine_ with Liara, and if anything happened at all that they _absolutely needed her for_ then Liara would call Shepard herself.

Garrus’ mandibles spread in silent amused memory of Liara’s not-so-carefully hidden exasperation, and Shepard’s sheepish acquiescence.  And so they’d asked, and been directed to, what Garrus presumed to be an old guest-house: a small stone building, retrofitted with prefab elements.  Not precisely home sweet home, but it was away from everyone and everything.  (Garrus had of course set up a sensor net.  It wouldn’t do to neglect personal security.  That would just be silly.)

And it was _quiet_.  Almost silent, even.  Rannoch not having any insect life, the only sounds were the endemic flora and fauna: the occasional mournful cry of a heron-like bird, and the swishing of the large ferns that grew everywhere.  There was a small generator in the building, but they hadn’t turned it on – there was enough energy stored in it to power the lights and locks overnight. 

It had taken Shepard some time to fall asleep.  She’d always had a hard time falling asleep, and the now-frequent nightmares didn’t help.  Before London, she’d just worked herself to the bone so she couldn’t help but sleep when her head hit the pillow, or else she got sleeping meds from Chakwas.  Now, her body could only handle small doses of the meds, and they didn’t help with the nightmares.  Chakwas had said she was working on something that might, but that really the best cure was therapy – and even if Shepard wanted to go that route, they just didn’t have the resources.  So Shepard had gone back to working herself to the bone in order to get any sleep at all … which, honestly, wasn’t hard, given the galactic rebuilding effort _plus_ a new baby.

But tonight, she’d drank much, danced a little, and she’d even laughed a few times.  When they’d come to the guest house, she’d had trouble falling asleep as usual, but not as much, and she’d now been asleep about forty-five minutes. 

He looked down at her, his gaze tracing the gaunt lines of her body.  Her sharp cheekbones, her strong jaw, her hollowed-out collarbones.  Her chest – the light swell of her breasts, never very large to begin with, but closer to her natural shape now than two weeks ago.  He could still count all her ribs, but her hips were more curved now, her waist slightly less sharply defined. 

She was healing.  Slowly.  And regardless – she was alive, and here, and his.  He shifted, placing his hand gently in the valley of her waist, feeling the soft suppleness of her skin.  He tilted his head down, pressing his forehead to hers so carefully, not wanting to wake her, but longing to share the emotion he felt, watching her, holding her.

“Spirits, but I love you,” he breathed, more subvocal than aloud, “my Shepard.”

She moved in her sleep, cuddling closer to him, nuzzling his mandible gently before slipping her arm around his waist in return.  He exhaled, his mandibles fluttering against her face, and he closed his eyes.  “I love you so much,” he whispered, “and I’m so damn proud of you.  I don’t know what I would have done without you.”  He held her the tiniest bit more tightly.  “I am never leaving your side again.  I’m going to buy the nicest plot of land on Palaven and we’re going to have a beautiful house and beautiful children and it’ll just be us for the rest of our days, galaxy be damned, you’re mine and I’m yours and I’m never letting go, not ever.”

“Does this house have a white picket fence?” 

Garrus inhaled sharply and pulled back.  Shepard’s eyes were still closed, but she was smiling.  “Ah.  I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.  Tell me more about this house.”

He settled back down, shifting lower on the bed so they were face-to-face.  “I don’t know, Shepard, I was just … being silly.  You wouldn’t want a house on Palaven, it’s too hot.  And you wouldn’t be able to eat anything.  What are picket fences?”

She laughed softly.  “It’s just an old cliché.  White picket fence, perfect domestic life.  And we could get food shipped in.”

“If you wanted, I suppose.  It would probably get expensive.  So white picket fences are like … ”  He cast around for a suitable turian equivalent.  “ … like … Spirits, I don’t think we have anything like that.  You humans and your strange traditions.” 

They were both quiet for a moment.  This time, Shepard spoke first.  “… you want a house?  You want to settle down?  Raise a family planetside?”

“I…”  He stopped, thought a moment.  “Honestly, Shepard, I think we’d both go stir-crazy.”

“Mm.”  She didn’t elaborate further. 

“… Do _you_ want to settle down?”

She didn’t respond immediately.  But after a moment, just when he thought she might have fallen asleep again, she spoke.  “Yes and no.  I’m dog tired, Garrus, and while the Normandy’s _home_ , it’s not exactly _restful_.  It’s also not set up for kids.  I’m honestly torn.  I don’t know what to do.”

He hummed in response, turning the thought over in his head.

“We don’t have much choice, though,” she continued.  “There’s no way either of us will be allowed to retire from service, let alone the public eye.”

“Someday we could, don’t you think?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “I doubt it.  I read up on your new rank.  Two down from Primarch, more or less.  That’s no joke.”

He huffed, his mandibles spreading down in mild annoyance.  “I still think it’s a token promotion.  And besides, there’s a pool of legates, it’s not like I’m next in line to the throne or any nonsense like that.”

“No, but your dad’s a damn sight closer, no one’s going to let you forget that.  And do you really think the galaxy will let me retire in peace?  At … 33?  Not likely.”  Shepard lifted herself up on one elbow, opening her eyes.  He met her gaze, the faint light from his eyepiece illuminating her and giving her eyes a glint.  “Why do you think the primarch made you a legate?”

Garrus grumbled, hoping she would have left the topic alone, and looked down at the bed.  “I don’t know.  Helped save the galaxy?  Managed to prove I wasn’t entirely useless?  Shot enough bad guys in the head?”

Shepard’s eyebrows furrowed.  “Seriously?  That’s what you think?”

He looked up again.  “Yeah.  It’s just a token, like I keep saying.  Old family, dad’s high up the ladder, I served with you and helped end the Reaper War – sort of – so it would have looked bad if Victus didn’t do _anything_.  Not like he could reward me with land or weapons or a ship, or any of the standard official rewards for outstanding service.  We don’t even know if Palaven’s habitable, I have the best weapons in the galaxy, and there’s no way I’m leaving the Normandy.  So: promotion.”

She frowned.  “Wow.  I … have you _read_ any of the reports about you?”

He pulled his mandibles in tight against his face.  “No.  I read enough of the C-Sec ones.  They’re probably just as bad.”

She blinked.  “Even mine?”

His mandibles went slack in shock.  “What?  No!  No, of – of course not, I wouldn’t think…” He trailed off, and his gaze fell, along with his shoulders. 

She reached out and tilted his chin back up to look at her.  “You truly have no idea how other people _actually_ view you?  You’re not some washed-out cop who couldn’t kick it in security.”

Mandibles tight to his face again.  “No, but I _am_ a criminal.  The whole vigilante justice thing.  Running away with a rogue Spectre and Cerberus agent.  You know.  Minor stuff.  They’re just sweeping it under the rug because everyone knows my name now.”

Shepard shook her head slightly in disbelief.  “No.  No, Garrus, that’s not …” She stopped, and exhaled.  “There’s a better way to do this.”  She sat up, and tapped her omnitool.

“What are you doing?”

“Proving a point.”  She sent whatever message it was she’d been typing.  “I could talk myself blue in the face about how highly I spoke of you to anyone who needed to hear it – and not just because you’re my partner.  You know I don’t do that.  But that’s not going to convince you.  It wouldn’t convince me.”

His omnitool pinged.  He looked at it.  A message from EDI, titled “ _Archival Files as per Shepard’s Request”_.  He paused, looked up at Shepard, who was watching him expectantly, then sighed and opened the file.  It couldn’t be worse than what he told himself on a regular basis.

> // Daily Log of Sergeant Hosuno Siracus, 4th Battalion  
>  Menae, 2187.07.17
> 
> Another triple wave of husks today.  Acus Squad took care of them in record time.  Vakarian is a top-quality commander.  Why the hell did he ever go to C-Sec?  Waste of an excellent resource.
> 
> // Daily Log of Corporal Shatera Culio, 4th Battalion  
>  Menae, 2187.07.20
> 
> Squad Leader Vakarian saved my ass today.  Sniped a husk out from behind me while we were doing recon.  Stupid of me to lose focus on my surroundings, but I don’t think he even realized I had.  He’s incredible.  Headshot, couldn’t have scoped it, and we were a solid four hundred fifty metres away from each other. 
> 
> // Formal Post-Mission Report of General Amiracus Venlari, 4th Battalion  
>  Menae, 2187.07.22
> 
> […]
> 
> I would like it on official record that I strongly recommend Consultant Vakarian be promoted.  His leadership skills are exceptional, to say nothing of his combat expertise.  He would be well at home commanding a ship of his own.  He is the epitome of personable professionalism with both subordinates and superiors.  His diplomacy is also top-notch, and his combat tactics are superb.  I swear on my honour that not one of these superlatives is unearned.  Garrus Vakarian is a shining example of turian society: loyalty, determination, critical thinking, and hard work are clearly core values for him, and I would trust him not only with my life, but with my entire battalion.  Wherever you’ve got him going, Senator, you had better be making good use of him.  The boy’s easily admiralty material, if not legate.  He will make us proud. 

Garrus blinked.  The file kept scrolling through at least a dozen more reports and excerpts, and there was a note from EDI at the bottom that read, essentially, that this was just what she found in a quick search.  “I…” he started, but realized he had no idea what to say.  He lowered his omnitool, and looked at Shepard.  Her lips were quirked in that “you didn’t believe me, did you” smile.

She put her hands on his forearms, his omnitool blinking out of existence.  “You had no idea, did you?”

“None.”  He shook his head.  “I was just doing my job."

She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his.  “Why did you think I made you ex-oh?”

His breath caught.  He remembered his conversation with Hannah, not so long ago as all that.  _If she chose you to be her executive officer,_ Hannah had said, _and trusted you with her ship and her crew…_

Shepard was still talking.  “I knew I could trust you to lead, even if … _when_ the worst happened.  I respect the hell out of you, and you’ve earned every ounce of that.  Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve what you’ve worked for.  Especially yourself.”

He took her hands, and ran his thumbs over them.  His subvocals were rumbling with an emotion he couldn’t name.  They spent several long moments in silence, before Garrus trusted himself to speak.  “…Thank you.  For showing me the reports.”

She squeezed his hands.  “You’re welcome.”  Another stretch of silence, then she turned her head and kissed his mandible gently.  “I love you.”

He returned the gesture as closely as he could, fluttering his mandible against her cheek.  “I love you, too.”


	41. I Expected You Sooner

Shepard was dreaming.  She knew she was, which she far preferred to not knowing.  She was dreaming that she was walking along the promenade on the Citadel, looking at the lake.  It was dark, which told her that she was either dreaming of the Battle of the Citadel, or the Battle of London.  She’d never known the Citadel to be dark otherwise.  The lake was placid, and there were no fires.  London, then, after she reached the beam.

“Shepard.”

So, this was a voices dream, then.   She preferred the silent dreams.  Voices lingered longer than images.

“Good to see you.”

Whose voice _was_ that?  It was annoyingly familiar.  The tiniest hint of status, the natural cadence of non-autotranslated English, a little bit of gravel …

“I must say I expected you sooner.”

The Illusive Man.  Sure enough, now that she’d pinned the voice, there he was, standing in the middle of the walkway, about fifty meters ahead of her.  She kept walking.  These sorts of dreams were always a toss-up.  She didn’t _think_ this was how things had gone after she’d reached the beam, but she still couldn’t quite remember.  Based on experience, if this didn’t turn out to be a replay of whatever happened after the beam, he’d either turn into some form of Reaper thrall as she approached, and they’d tussle until she woke up, or he’d just keep talking – her brain would pick and choose from whatever she remembered him saying.  She didn’t usually say anything herself.

As she approached, he turned and fell into step beside her, walking leisurely along the lake.  They crossed a bridge and went back up the other side.  Shepard was now puzzled.  He hadn’t said anything further yet, hadn’t turned into a husk, and seemed to just be … following her lead.  She hadn’t consciously been choosing her path, but now she did, turning off the main walkways and heading into the embassies, ending up in the café the diplomats ate lunch in.  She sat down at a table, and to her surprise, the Illusive Man sat down across from her. 

She stared at him, thoroughly unnerved.  He smiled, then leaned forward, putting his hands on the table, and met her gaze squarely.  “I’m sure you have questions, Shepard.  I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

He took his hands off the table and leaned back.  Suddenly, he had a lit cigar, and there was an ashtray and a glass of whiskey on the table.  This didn’t surprise her: she didn’t think she’d _ever_ seen the Illusive Man without whiskey and a cigar, so it was entirely natural for her brain to supply the missing images.  But he wasn’t chattering at her about dubiously ethical missions or her ‘duty to humanity’ or whatever it was he used to chatter about.  No, he just sat back, took a drag from the cigar, and blew the smoke out in front of him.  As if he had all the time in the world. 

“Or haven’t you noticed?”  He tapped the cherry off his cigar.  “Well.  You’re a busy woman.  You’ve got a lot to think about.  That’s understandable.”  He placed the cigar in the ashtray, picked up the whiskey glass, swirled it around once, then downed the contents. 

He put the glass back on the table and stood up.  “Have a good night, Shepard.”  He picked the cigar up, took another drag, and walked away, trailing the smoke behind him.

She blinked, and when her eyes opened, she was staring at the sliding colours of FTL travel over her skylight, and she could hear Garrus snoring beside her.

* * *

Shepard was pouring cereal into a bowl when Liara came out of her quarters the next morning.  The asari smiled at Shepard and went to the fridge, getting the protein drink that typically made up her breakfast.  “Good morning.”

“Morning.  Sleep well?” 

“Yes, quite.  You?”

“Decent.  Viatrix slept nearly five hours straight.”

“That’s great!”  Liara beamed, filling a glass with the bright green drink before putting the bottle back in the fridge.  “Is she still updeck with Garrus?”

“Mm hmm.”  Shepard mixed milk powder into cold water and added it to her bowl, then pulled a spoon out of the cutlery drawer and leaned back against the counter to eat.  “They’ll be down in an hour or so.  She gets a bath this morning and it’s his turn.” 

Liara nodded and took a drink from her glass.  “When you have a few minutes to spare, I received a package from Miranda overnight, when we passed the Antar communications relay.”

“Of course. I’ve got time now, in fact, why don’t we make it a breakfast meeting.”

Liara nodded, swallowed, and moved around the corner into her office, Shepard right behind her with her cereal in her hand.

* * *

//EYESONLY CODE ZETA-TER017842  
ORIGIN: MIRROR  
DESTINATION: SERAPH  
SENT: 218710201331SET  
RECEIVED: 218710210134SET

ATTACHMENTS: 871020S23.mp9, 871019H152.mp9

//PLAY FILE 871020S23.mp9

* * *

The audio quality was poor, and the video even worse.  Still, Shepard and Liara could make out Miranda’s hair framing her face, and the hard set of her jawline.  She looked determined, as always, but there was more than a small hint of unpleasantness in the creases around her eyes – if those were creases, anyway, and not video feed glitches. 

“Things are not good on Earth,” Miranda said.  Her voice was gravelly from static, and her eyes didn’t stop scanning whatever was on the screen just below the camera.  “The Alliance is still enforcing martial law, and a _lot_ of the citizenry is chafing to the point where we’re starting to see riots. The United North American States have _just_ pulled a government together, the Chinese People’s Federation is starting to get water infrastructure moving at last, and the European Union still doesn’t even exist – though Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have set up provisional governments.”

She glanced up at the camera.  “Of course, that’s only the bits of the world I can keep tabs on.  I’m hearing rumours that it’s a lot worse in eastern Europe and western Africa, in particular – not to mention the entire Brazilian megametropolis can be seen burning from space.

She looked back down and began typing something.  “Part of it is, of course, that everyone’s fucking exhausted, including the Alliance, and people without military training start to resent the people _with_ military training for being in control when said people with military training are too tired to be nice anymore.  But a bigger part of it is just that everyone’s still terrified.  The Reapers may not be killing anyone actively, but we didn’t see them coming the first time, and not everyone has access to the ultraclassified information we do about what happened.”

She paused, tilted her head slightly, and looking wryly into the camera.  “Not to say that we _have_ any of that information, of course, because no one’s got a clue except maybe you.”

She looked down again and typed for a couple seconds before continuing.  “The organization that’s targeting you is called Minos, as far as I can tell, and they—” here she made a disgusted grunt—“seem to consist mainly of the dregs of Cerberus lowlifes, who have buddied up with a bunch of unhappy xenophobes among the civilian population…  Though I suppose that particular overlap was probably pretty wide to begin with.  They’re sowing discontent and blaming it on the foreign folks that are still on Earth – not that there are many left, which honestly makes it even easier.  Anyway, they want you dead because … because you’re at the center of it all, I suppose.  That’s the best guess I’ve got so far.  You unified us all, they don’t want anyone unified, so there’s your big red X.”

She stopped typing, shifted her weight back, put her hands on her hips and stared straight into the camera.  “I got a particularly good clip of some of their operatives last night, from somewhere in southeastern Asia.  I’ve attached it.  Looks like they’ve decided on ‘team colours’, as it were, so now you can know what you’re looking for.  I’m hearing chatter that they want to move the head of their operations to Omega now that the relays are open.  Which is batty if you ask me, seeing as Omega’s the melting pot of the galaxy.  Less military breathing down your throat, I suppose, but xenophobia’s going to get you shot in an alley on Omega.  Oh well.  I guess if they get themselves killed, it’s one less problem for us.”

She shook her head and went back to typing.  “That’s all I’ve got for now.  Talk in a week.  Mirror out.”

The clip froze on its final frame, and Shepard and Liara stood in silence for a moment.  Shepard rolled her shoulder and cracked her neck; Liara exhaled sharply and narrowed her eyes.

“They sound like rebels without a cause to me,” Shepard said, “trying to control anything they can.  I’m an easy target.”

Liara chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully.  “I wonder what happened to the low-grade Cerberus employees after the Reapers died.  Didn’t they all have to go in for the implants?”

Shepard looked over at her.  “You’re right.  The Reaper implants.  Those don’t leave a brain in great shape, based on the look of most of the ones I killed.  Halfway to husks.”

Liara didn’t reply, only set the next clip to play.

* * *

//PLAY FILE 871019H152.mp9

* * *

This video feed was silent, and of even worse quality than Miranda’s.  Looked like an old news drone, based on the logo Shepard thought she recognised in the lower-right corner of the screen.  Miranda had probably hacked into it, still broadcasting anything it saw to the ether, zooming around recording anything its algorithms deemed newsworthy. 

In this case, it was just over a half dozen men and women, all human by the looks of them, wearing dark browns and dirty yellows, a bright stripe of red painted along the crest of their helmets along with a circle around the crown.  A circle with a vertical line through the center, if you looked at it from above, which the drone did several times.  They were all filthy, which was no surprise, as they were all fighting through dense jungle.  Most of their gear was paramilitary; some of them didn’t have full sets – looked like they’d traded pieces to other members of the unit.  A multitude of skin colours were represented, Shepard noted with ironic amusement: nothing like the threat of offplanet races to make you forget you used to hate people based on their skin colour.  Surely tentacles and back humps were far more threatening.

The clip wasn’t long, less than thirty seconds in fact: the unit was cutting through brush, fighting their way towards something or other.  One of them looked up and saw the drone, then called over their shoulder to the person in the back – the leader of the unit, Shepard guessed, based on the extra red stripe on his collar.  The others paused as the leader came up to inspect the drone, looking it over, looking into its lens.  Then the man shook his head, waved it off, said something to the other men and women around him, then walked off.  The others followed, and the clip ended.

Shepard squinted.  There was an odd feeling in her gut.  She was distinctly more uncomfortable after watching this clip than she thought she should be.  Yes, these people worked for an organization that wanted her dead, but really, a lot of people had wanted her dead for a few years now, that really wasn’t news. 

She played the clip again, watched carefully.  Her instincts weren’t usually wrong.  She studied the people carefully.  Most of them she couldn’t get a clear look at: the video was too grainy, the colours too muted, and most of them didn’t look at the camera.  The woman who spotted the drone seemed youngish, had black hair, and seemed scrawny.  She didn’t do anything that made Shepard feel nervous.   No one else in the squad did anything odd or untoward, beyond one of the other women spitting into the brush.  No, it wasn’t any of them, and she didn’t see anything strange in the environment around them.  It had to be the leader, then, that was pinging her radar.  She stared at him as he came up through his unit, got up in front of the drone, looked it over, then looked into its lens.  She went back three seconds, then went frame by frame.

The man had a strong jawline and an even stronger nose, one that looked like it might have been broken and poorly re-set.  He had paint on his cheeks and forehead, obscuring the cut of his eyebrows and making it hard to tell if he had any facial hair.  His eyes, even muted from the drone’s poor video feed, were very light-coloured, and his eye movements were quick and focused.  All of his movement was quick and focused.  She backed up to a frame where he was presenting his profile to the camera, and studied it: that strong jawline again, maybe the hint of a beard on the underside of his jaw where the paint didn’t reach, and an earlobe that looked like it had seen better days peeking out underneath his helmet. 

This was the problem, for sure.  Her gut was churning.  This person looked familiar.  She exhaled, backed the clip up five seconds, and played it at half speed.  This time, she let herself watch without thinking, just let her eyes drift over the screen as the man walked up, looked at the drone, looked at the camera—

Her heart dropped into her stomach like a lead weight, and she felt even sicker.  It was the jawline for sure.  Deep-cover espionage could only change so much about a person’s features, and bone structure wasn’t usually on the list.  The nose was wrong, the eyes were the wrong colour, but the jawline was unmistakable, and the way he studied the problem, the way he glanced over it and took everything in in heartbeats—

She couldn’t be sure, though.  It could just be a striking resemblance. 

She opened her mouth to speak and found it was dry.  She closed it again, swallowed, then turned to Liara.  “When’s our next fly-by of a comms relay?”

“Five o’clock this afternoon, I think.”

“Can we get an incredibly secure message to a specific Alliance ship?”

“Of course, if we have the comm codes for them, and if they have the codes to open it.”

“I need to send this to my mother.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five years into this behemoth. Happy birthday to me?


End file.
